Never Call Retreat: The American Civil War Trilogy: 3 - Hardcover

This is an eloquent study of the most bitter years of the war when death slashed the country with a brutality unparalleled in the history of the United States. Through the kaleidoscopic tone and temper of the struggle, two men grappled with the burden of being leaders in both politics and war. In the North, Lincoln remained resolute that a house divided against itself could not stand. His vast use of resources is brilliantly contrasted with Jefferson Davis' valiant struggle for political and economic stability in the hopelessly fragmented and underdeveloped South. 'Better than any other history of the Civil War it combines narrative vigour, literary grace, freshness of view and independence of judgement, and a kind of catholic spirit which embraces the whole vast and tumultuous scene' Henry Steele Commager. This book can be read as a self-contained narrative or in sequence with the previous two volumes.

Bruce Catton was born in 1899. As a child living in a small town in Michigan, Catton was stimulated by the reminiscences of the Civil War that he heard from local veterans. His education at Oberlin College, Ohio, was interrupted by two years of naval service in World War I and was subsequently abandoned for a career in journalism. While he was employed as a reporter for the Boston American, the Cleveland News, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (1920-26), Catton continued his lifelong study of the Civil War period. He subsequently worked for the Newspaper Enterprise Service (1926-41) and for the U.S. War Production Board. In 1954 he became a member of the staff of American Heritage magazine, and from 1959 he served as its senior editor. A commission to write a Centennial History of the Civil War evolved into Catton's celebrated trilogy on the Army of the Potomac. Catton's brilliance as a historian lay in his ability to bring to historical narrative the immediacy of reportage. He died in 1978.