Podcast appearances and mentions of bruce catton

On January 11, 2024, historian John Reeves gave a lecture on the rise of Ulysses S. Grant during an extraordinary decade. Captain Ulysses S. Grant, an obscure army officer who resigned his commission in 1854, rose to become general-in-chief of the United States Army in 1864. What accounts for this astonishing turn-around? Was it destiny? Or was he just an ordinary man, opportunistically benefiting from the turmoil of the Civil War to advance to the highest military rank? Grant's life story is an almost inconceivable tale of redemption within the context of his fraught relationships with his antislavery father and his slaveholding wife. His connection to the institution of slavery, before and during the war, will be reconsidered in this talk. John Reeves has been a teacher, editor, and writer for more than thirty years. The Civil War, in particular, has been his passion since he first read Bruce Catton's The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in the 1960s. He is the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon, A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, and Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

After a long line of incompetence, after a long chain of excuses, after a series of failures, the Union cause finally turned around when General Ulysses S. Grant took command. Other generals had focused on pomp and circumstance, they had been anxious and defensive, they claimed they didn't have the resources or troops they needed.As the great historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Hallowed Ground, “when Grant showed up things began to happen.” It didn't matter if he was in charge of a small army or a big one, he was a leader and when leaders arrive, they make a difference.---And in today's reading from the Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan explains why it's so important to remember the idea that "hurt people hurt people" when thinking about how to respond to haters.

Ryan speaks with Ty Seidule about his book Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, Henry Flipper and the less-told story of the aftermath of the Civil War and slavery in America, the importance of choosing carefully who to commemorate, how to grapple with challenging family history, and more.Ty Seidule is a retired United States Army brigadier general, the former head of the history department at the United States Military Academy, the first professor emeritus of history at West Point, and the inaugural Joshua Chamberlain Fellow at Hamilton College. He has published numerous books, articles, and videos on military history including the award-winning West Point History of the Civil War. Ty graduated from Washington and Lee University and holds a PhD from the Ohio State University. Ty's work can be found on his website: tyseidule.com.

The incomparable Gary Gallagher returned on a live stream to discuss his latest edited work, "Bruce Catton: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy," published by the Library of America. We'll learn how much Catton impacted Gary and how his work is so timeless for any Civil War historian. This audio was pulled directly from the live stream event.

OverviewIt's May 4th, 1864 — You are a soldier in the Army of the Potomac marching towards the Rapidan River and into The Wilderness -- a 70-mile tract of thickets and dense forest that only a year before had been the location of this same armies defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Before you cross the floating bridge over the Rapidan River that will later be torn up so that you cannot use it again to retreat... you may ask yourself... How did I get here?Quotes“It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns.”— Federal Veteran instructing Recruits in Rifleman Skills, America Goes to War by Bruce Catton

Gary Gallagher talks about his latest edited collection, a new Library of America edition of Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy.

In these ‘Shorts' episodes of my podcast, I'll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes. This one comes from Episode 57 with General David Petraeus, a Partner with the global investment firm KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in May 2013. In this clip, he talks how he was able to focus on the bigger picture whilst he was leading coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.  FREE RESOURCES Ben's FREE 10-4-10 Leadership Programme: https://bit.ly/FREEleadershipmini-course (https://bit.ly/FREEleadershipmini-course)  Ben's website: https://bit.ly/BenMortonLeadership (https://bit.ly/BenMortonLeadership)  LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE https://www.ben-morton.com/general-david-petraeus-strategic-leadership-big-ideas/ (https://www.ben-morton.com/general-david-petraeus-strategic-leadership-big-ideas/)   SHOW LINKS ‘Grant Takes Command' by Bruce Catton: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316132403 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316132403) 

In the episode we conclude our discussion of General Thomas. He oversaw the cavalry operations of the South and Southeast at the end of the war and his men captured Jefferson Davis. We also discuss his various roles and contributions after the war and his passing on March 28, 1970. Many of his contemporaries compared him to George Washington and Bruce Catton called him perhaps the best general of the war. 

Nevins-Freeman Address: Tom Clemens on General Joseph K. F. Mansfield For More Info: www.ChicagoCWRT.org The Chicago Civil War Round Table's Nevins-Freeman Award is intended to honor those who advance Civil War scholarship and the Round Table movement. Past winners have included Bruce Catton, Gary Gallagher, Bud Robertson and James McPherson. This year we honor Tom Clemens, a man who through his writings and battlefield tours has done so much to illuminate the Antietam Campaign, On October 12th Tom Clemens' Nevins-Freeman address will explore General Joseph K. F. Mansfield's life, including his all-too-brief (2 days) tenure as commander of the XII Corps. What most Civil War enthusiasts know about Joseph K. F. Mansfield, if they know anything at all, is that he was a Union corps commander who was killed at Antietam. While that is true, it was only the end of his 40 plus years of service in the U.S. Army. Often dismissed as a non-combatant through most of his career, he actually was involved in several vital aspects in the early part of the Civil War. The facts are that he was he was anything but a "staff puke," as Ed Bearss once dismissed him on a tour not many years ago. Dr. Thomas G. Clemens received his Doctorate in History Education from George Mason University, where he studied under noted Civil War historian Dr. Joseph L. Harsh. After a 34 year career at Hagerstown Community College, he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2012. He edited and annotated General Ezra A. Carman's manuscript, the Maryland Campaign of September 1862, in addition to numerous articles and several monographs, including one on Gen. Joseph K. F. Mansfield. Tom is a founding member and current president of Save Historic Antietam Foundation Inc., a non-profit historic preservation organization and an NPS-certified Antietam Battlefield Guide.

General David Petraeus is a Partner with the global investment firm KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in May 2013. He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and FirstStream, a venture investor in more than 15 startups, and engaged in a variety of academic endeavors.     Prior to joining KKR, General Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands, five of which were in combat, including command of the 101st Airborne Division during the fight to Baghdad and the first year in Iraq, command of the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, command of coalition forces in Iraq during the Surge, command of U.S. Central Command, and command of coalition forces in Afghanistan.   Following retirement from the military and after Senate confirmation by a vote of 94-0, he served as Director of the CIA during a period of significant achievements in the global war on terror, the establishment of important Agency digital initiatives, and significant investments in the Agency's most important asset, its human capital.     General Petraeus graduated with distinction from the U.S. Military Academy, and he is the only person in Army history to be the top graduate of both the demanding U.S. Army Ranger School and the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College. For his full bio, check them out on my website.  This really is a remarkable episode and we've not had a guest on the show who has shouldered the same weight of leadership responsibility as General Petraeus – during our conversation I asked him directly how he remained resilient and managed this level of responsibility. Amongst this we discussed strategy, leadership styles and how to get things done in complex, fast moving environments. Links Mentioned: ‘Grant Takes Command' by Bruce Catton: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316132403 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316132403)  Find out more about Ben's work: https://linktr.ee/BMLeadership (https://linktr.ee/BMLeadership)

On August 19, 2021 historian John Reeves discussed the battle of the Wilderness, the first clash between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. John Reeves has been a teacher, editor, and writer for more than twenty-five years. The Civil War, in particular, has been his passion since he first read Bruce Catton's The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in the 1960s. He is the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon and, most recently, A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

  Frederick Douglas was the “prose poet of America's (and perhaps a universal) body politic. He searched for the human soul, envisioned through slavery and freedom in all their meanings. There had been no other voice quite like Douglass's.” Join me and Professor David Blight as we discuss his Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom. The lessons Douglass taught about freedom, dignity, and justice nearly 150 years ago are as important and relevant today as they were then. Guest David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University David W. Blight  is a teacher, scholar and public historian. At Yale University he is Sterling Professor of History, joining that faculty in January, 2003. As of June, 2004, he is Director, succeeding David Brion Davis, of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In his capacity as director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, Blight organizes conferences, working groups, lectures, the administering of the annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and many public outreach programs regarding the history of slavery and its abolition. He previously taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. In 2013-14 he was the William Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University, UK, and in 2010-11, Blight was the Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19th-Century American History at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. During the 2006-07 academic year he was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, New York Public Library. In October of 2018, Simon and Schuster published his new biography of Frederick Douglass, entitled, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which garnered nine book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. The Douglass book has been optioned by Higher Ground Productions and Netflix for a projected feature film. Blight works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards of museums and historical societies, and as a member of a small team of advisors to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum team of curators. For that institution he wrote the recently published essay, “Will It Rise: September 11 in American Memory.”  In 2012, Blight was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and delivered an induction address, “The Pleasure and Pain of History.” In 2018, Blight was appointed by the Georgia Historical Society as a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Teaching Fellow, which recognizes national leaders in the field of history as both writers and educators whose research has enhanced or changed the way the public understands the past. Blight's newest books include annotated editions, with introductory essay, of Frederick Douglass's second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (Yale Univ. Press, 2013), Robert Penn Warren's Who Speaks for the Negro, (Yale Univ. Press, 2014), and the monograph, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Harvard University Press, published August 2011), which received the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Award for best book in non-fiction on racism and human diversity. American Oracle is an intellectual history of Civil War memory, rooted in the work of Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin.  Blight is also the author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation, (Harcourt, 2007, paperback in 2009).  This book combines two newly discovered slave narratives in a volume that recovers the lives of their authors, John Washington and Wallace Turnage, as well as provides an incisive history of the story of emancipation.  In June, 2004, the New York Times ran a front page story about the discovery and significance of these two rare slave narratives.  A Slave No More garnered three book prizes, including the Connecticut Book Award for non-fictio...

  Frederick Douglas was the “prose poet of America's (and perhaps a universal) body politic. He searched for the human soul, envisioned through slavery and freedom in all their meanings. There had been no other voice quite like Douglass's.” Join me and Professor David Blight as we discuss his Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom. The lessons Douglass taught about freedom, dignity, and justice nearly 150 years ago are as important and relevant today as they were then. Guest David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University David W. Blight  is a teacher, scholar and public historian. At Yale University he is Sterling Professor of History, joining that faculty in January, 2003. As of June, 2004, he is Director, succeeding David Brion Davis, of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In his capacity as director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, Blight organizes conferences, working groups, lectures, the administering of the annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and many public outreach programs regarding the history of slavery and its abolition. He previously taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. In 2013-14 he was the William Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University, UK, and in 2010-11, Blight was the Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19th-Century American History at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. During the 2006-07 academic year he was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, New York Public Library. In October of 2018, Simon and Schuster published his new biography of Frederick Douglass, entitled, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which garnered nine book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. The Douglass book has been optioned by Higher Ground Productions and Netflix for a projected feature film. Blight works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards of museums and historical societies, and as a member of a small team of advisors to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum team of curators. For that institution he wrote the recently published essay, “Will It Rise: September 11 in American Memory.”  In 2012, Blight was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and delivered an induction address, “The Pleasure and Pain of History.” In 2018, Blight was appointed by the Georgia Historical Society as a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Teaching Fellow, which recognizes national leaders in the field of history as both writers and educators whose research has enhanced or changed the way the public understands the past. Blight's newest books include annotated editions, with introductory essay, of Frederick Douglass's second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (Yale Univ. Press, 2013), Robert Penn Warren's Who Speaks for the Negro, (Yale Univ. Press, 2014), and the monograph, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Harvard University Press, published August 2011), which received the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Award for best book in non-fiction on racism and human diversity. American Oracle is an intellectual history of Civil War memory, rooted in the work of Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin.  Blight is also the author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation, (Harcourt, 2007, paperback in 2009).  This book combines two newly discovered slave narratives in a volume that recovers the lives of their authors, John Washington and Wallace Turnage, as well as provides an incisive history of the story of emancipation.  In June, 2004, the New York Times ran a front page story about the discovery and significance of these two rare slave narratives.

John F. Marszalek: The Nevins-Freeman Award Address: The History of the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant Named after famed historians Allen Nevins and Douglas Southall Freeman, the Nevins-Freeman Award is the highest honor the Civil War Round Table of Chicago can bestow. It is awarded for an individual's contributions to Civil War scholarship, and their dedication to the Round Table movement. Past award winners include Bruce Catton, James M McPherson and Wiley Sword. This year we are proud to give this award to a distinguished author and historian, John Marszalek. John F. Marszalek retired in 2002 as a Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University. He taught courses in the Civil War, Jacksonian America, and Race Relations. He is the author or editor of thirteen books and over two hundred fifty articles and book reviews. Sherman, A Soldier's Passion for Order was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize, and his first book Court Martial, A Black Man in America was made into a Showtime motion picture. He continues to lecture widely throughout the nation and has appeared on the major television networks. He serves on the board of advisors of the Lincoln Forum, the Lincoln Prize, the National Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and the Monitor Museum (Newport News, Virginia). After John Y. Simon's death in July 2008, Marsazalek was asked to serve as the Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant project. These papers are now located at Mississippi State University. On April 13th Professor Marszalek will talk about how Grant's memoirs came to be written, and its history up to and including the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press publication of (eds) John F. Marszalek with David S. Nolen and Louis P. Gallo: The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, the Complete Annotated Edition. The edition was published in October 2017.

Today, we have an experimental episode in store. Having had some amazing guests on the show who have told us their backstories and shared with us their inspirations, why limit them to those that still walk the earth today? One of the historical figures that are very intriguing is Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist that was born a slave, who eventually became one of the most prominent abolitionists at his time, even heralded as the most famous Black man in the world, and the most photographed person in all of America in the 1800s. To share Douglass’ fascinating life story, today’s guest is Professor David W. Blight, the world’s foremost expert on the life of Frederick Douglass. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Douglass biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which combines stories and insights, drawing from a repository of Douglass’ letters and papers from the latter third of his life, which have not previously been written about. David is the Sterling Professor of African American studies and the director of the Guider Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, not to mention an award-winning author of seven other books, plus multiple op-eds. In this episode, Professor David Blight shares a bit about his personal relationship with Black history and what attracted him to Frederick Douglass, and goes on to share Douglass’ story, from the reinvention of his life out of human bondage, to discovering the power of language, and becoming a speaker during the golden age of oratory as performance, to his rise to stardom after writing his books, his mastery of multiple witting styles, and his declining mental health. David also explains the relationship Douglass had with his wife and his family, his foray into writing history, and his problem with the pleasures and perils of fame, as well as the legacy he has left us in his words. Tune in today!Key Points From This Episode:David kicks things off by speaking about his anticipated reception of Prophet of Freedom.The appetite for good history, what good history is – it tells a good story, it’s well-researched.David desires to reach real people who want to understand the essential threat of slavery.David talks about the influence that his teachers and historical sites had on him as a child.The narratives in Bruce Catton’s books factored into igniting David’s fascination with history.David first encountered Black history in college, after which he taught it in high school.What attracted David to Frederick Douglass – he realized that slavery, the civil war, and abolition are the essential threats of American history.David was attracted to both the importance of the subject and the story embedded in it.Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:David Blight on TwitterDavid Blight on FacebookDavid BlightFrederick Douglass: Prophet of FreedomDavid Blight BooksDavid Blight on AmazonFrom Slavery to FreedomThe Peculiar InstitutionLi

Date: June 9, 1974 Speaker: Bruce Catton Topic: The First Annual Chicago Civil War Round Table Nevins-Freeman Award - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting Sam Vaughn, Ralph Newman, & E. B. 'Pete' Long present the first Annual Chicago Civil War Round Table Nevins-Freeman Award to Bruce Catton

Date: April 12, 1957 Speaker: Bruce Catton Topic: The Civil War Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting Audio Very Poor

Date: April 30, 1953 Speaker: Bruce Catton Topic: “The Battle of Five Forks & Gen'l Sheridan's Indictment of Gen'l Warren” Running Time: 1:24:35

These talks were given on the CWRT's first battlefield tour of Gettysburg, Antietam, and Harper's Ferry. Bruce Catton delivered a short talk at the Gettysburg College with preceding remarks delivered by college dignitaries at that time. Catton's talk is titled: “The Army of the Potomac: A Problem in Command.” Total Time: 79:12

About this episode:  Eight decades ago, popular historian Bruce Catton, and journalist/author Jim Bishop wrote works that profoundly affected my life and future profession: teaching. Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Bishop's The Day Lincoln Was Shot were both written in such dramatic prose that the events, people - indeed, the very era itself - came alive for me. Even today, both authors and their works reinforce my passionate belief that history is alive, relevant, and should be conveyed as a story. For this episode, it is with great reverence and pleasure that I take my lead from Bishop's book, which was published in 1955, sold over 3 million copies, and was translated into 16 languages. He began his research for the day Lincoln was shot in 1930. Then, after two decades had passed, in 1953, in an effort to expand his research, Bishop began reading seven million words of government documents. The result: an absolutely riveting hour-by-hour account of Abraham Lincoln's last 24 hours. In respectful tribute to the two authors that most influenced my professional coming-of-age, and stoked my drive to recount history as a story, I dedicate this effort. With Bishop's work as my central point of reference, here: hour-by-hour, from seven in the morning of April the 14th to 7:22 and 10 seconds the next morning, is the story of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. ----more----   Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:  John Wilkes Booth William H. Seward George Atzerodt David Herold Lewis Paine/Payne Mary Surratt   Get The Guide: Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide, The Civil War: A History of the War between the States from Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.   Producer: Dan Irving

He is quoted often, correctly and incorrectly, but few have actually read his works in full - and even fewer know much about the man himself, Major General Carl von Clausewitz, Kingdom of Prussia.Out guest for the full hour will be Donald Stoker, author of the new book, Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Stoker is a Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College's program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.His previous book, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, won the distinguished Fletcher Pratt award for the best non-fiction Civil War book of 2010. Past winners include Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote.

About this episode:  This is the story of the Battle of Sharpsburg, of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in the history of this nation. It was an engagment that moved popular historian Bruce Catton to write that September 17, 1862 was a day of sheer, unadulterated violence. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:  Bruce Catton George B. McClellan General Edmund Kirby-Smith Braxton Bragg Charles Francis Adams Jefferson Davis James Longstreet D.H. Hill Joseph Hooker     Other References From This Episode   Sharpsburg, Maryland Harper's Ferry Antietam Battle Map Featured Below:   Landscape Turned Red: The Battle Of Antietam    Antietam: The Photographic Legacy Of America's Bloodiest Day Get The Guide: Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide, The Civil War: A History of the War between the States from Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.   Producer: Dan Irving

He is quoted often, correctly and incorrectly, but few have actually read his works in full - and even fewer know much about the man himself, Major General Carl von Clausewitz, Kingdom of Prussia.Out guest for the full hour will be Donald Stoker, author of the new book, Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Stoker is a  Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College's program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.His previous book, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, won the distinguished Fletcher Pratt award for the best non-fiction Civil War book of 2010. Past winners include Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote.Episode first broadcast in DEC14.

Rebroadcast of the long running radio program, "The Ave Maria Hour", a presentation of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. www.AtonementFriars.org The Reverend James Sheeran, a Catholic priest, served with the 14th Louisiana Regiment from New Orleans in General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Writer and historian Bruce Catton once said he wished he had met Sheeran. Sheeran perplexed “Stonewall” Jackson by his tenacity and self assurance. Robert E. Lee and Phil Sheridan both backed down in the face of Sheeran’s logic and determination. Father Sheeran ministered to those in need of religious support, cared for the sick and wounded, and performed innumerable acts of kindness for his fellow man. Sheeran’s determination and righteousness, grounded in God, inspired common soldiers and generals alike. In the face of all kinds of adversity, Sheeran displayed real backbone. Three things seemed to guide Sheeran in every action, every disagreement and every situation. He believed in duty, the word of the Lord, and his home in the Confederacy.

He is quoted often, correctly and incorrectly, but few have actually read his works in full - and even fewer know much about the man himself, Major General Carl von Clausewitz, Kingdom of Prussia.Out guest for the full hour will be Donald Stoker, author of the new book, Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Stoker is a  Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College's program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.His previous book, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, won the distinguished Fletcher Pratt award for the best non-fiction Civil War book of 2010. Past winners include Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote.

David Blight discusses the place of Bruce Catton’s novels writing during the Civil Rights Era, 100 years after the end of the Civil War. His talk was part of the Huntington Conference “Civil War Lives,” held at the Huntington Library in October 2011. Blight is the author of “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era” (2011); he is the Class of 1954 Professor of History at Yale University.