Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton's unsurpassed narrative, evoking the sweep and drama of a nation at war, provides the basis for The AMERICAN HERITAGE(R) History of the Civil War, which includes more than 800 important contemporary photographs and sketches and magnificent paintings. The Civil War's battles and campaigns are painstakingly illustrated in three-dimensional maps that guide the reader through the four years of the struggle. With illustrations that range from photographs by Matthew Brady and sketches by soldiers at the front, to famous paintings by Winslow Homer, the book boasts an extraordinary breadth of pictures and artifacts culled from across the nation.

This richly textured tapestry is made complete by the words of men and women who actually witnessed the events. From the journal entry of a Confederate soldier departing for battle and the letter an African-American soldier scrawled on the back of his wife's letter to him, to some of the best-known documents written in the very hand of Abraham Lincoln, each page of this book allows the participants to speak for themselves.

The Civil War, more than any other period of American history, shaped us as a nation. Any real understanding of where we have been and where we are going must be based on knowledge of this conflict. The AMERICAN HERITAGE(R) History of theCivil War re-creates those four crucial years in the nation's life, and it will endure as a masterpiece of history.