Shadows of Blue & Gray

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Ambrose Bierce didn’t just write about the Civil War, he lived through it–on the battlefields and over the graves–and in doing so gave birth to a literary chronicle of men at war previously unseen in the American literary canon. The fact that some of these stories verged on the supernatural, others on factual reporting, and others on the fine line between humor and morbidity in no way detracts from their resonance to both the history of the war between the states and the imaginative historical literature in the tradition of Washington Irving.

Shadows of Blue & Gray collects all of Bierce’s Civil War stories (twenty-seven in total) with six of his memoir pieces on his own experiences on the front lines.

This collection includes such classics as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “A Horseman in the Sky,” “Parker Addison, Philosopher”, and “A Bivouac of the Dead”; as well as lesser known stories and sketches such as “The Mockingbird” and “Two Military Executions” and memoirs of his experiences at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Franklin.

Reviews

“Twenty-seven stories, along with some memoirs and reportage … famous for their unflinching look at the brutality of war” —Publishers Weekly

“The most important American writer who served as a combat soldier in the Civil War” —Booklist

About the Author

Ambrose Bierce was one of the leading men of letters in 19th-century America. Among his most important books were The Devil's Dictionary and Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.

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Brian M. Thomsen is the editor of Shadows of Blue and Gray-the Civil War Writings of Ambrose Pierce, Alternate Gettysburgs, The American Fantasy Tradition, and The Man in the Arena: Selected Writings of Theodore Roosevelt. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Books By Brian M. Thomsen