Bruce Catton Books In Order

Publication Order of Army of the Potomac Trilogy Books

Publication Order of Grant Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of States and the Nation Books

Publication Order of Great Lakes Books

Publication Order of The Centennial History of the Civil War Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Bruce Catton
Bruce Catton was an American journalist and historian that is best known for his books concerning the American Civil War. He was known as a narrative historian and specialized in popular history, featuring historical vignettes and interesting characters, along with the basic dates, facts, and analyses.

He was born October 9, 1899 in Petoskey, Michigan to Adela M. (Patten) and George R. Catton, and he grew up in Benzonia, Michigan. Bruce’s dad was a Congregationalist minister, who accepted a teaching job in Benzonia Academy and later became the academy’s headmaster.

Catton, as a boy, first heard the reminiscences of the aged veterans that had fought in the Civil War. Their stories gave a tone and a color not just to his village, he explained, but to the idea of life with which we grew up. Bruce believes that he was always subconsciously driven by this attempt to restate this faith and show where it was properly grounded, how it grew out of what so many young men on either side believed and felt and were brave enough to do.

In 1916, he started attending Oberlin College, however he quit because of World War I without obtaining a degree.

After Bruce served for a short time during World War I with the US Navy, he became an editor and reporter for the papers The Cleveland News (as a freelance reporter), Cleveland The Plain Dealer, and the Boston American. He wrote book reviews and editorials from 1926 until 1941 for the Newspaper Enterprise Association (a Scripps-Howard syndicate), and served as a Washington DC correspondent. He tried twice to finish his studies, however he found himself distracted by his newspaper work. He was awarded an honorary degree in 1956 by Oberlin College.

At the beginning of World War II, he was too old to serve in the military. In 1941, he accepted a job as Director of Information for the War Production Board, and he later had similar posts in the Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce. His experiences as a federal employee prepared him to write “The War Lords of Washington”, his first book, in 1948. Even though the book was not a success commercially, he was inspired to quit federal employment in order to write full time.

Bruce married Hazel H. Cherry on August 16, 1925. They had a son, named William Bruce Catton, who was born in 1926. He was a history teacher at Princeton University and Middlebury College, Vermont.

Bruce won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction for “A Stillness at Appomattox”. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the greatest civilian honor, because he made readers hear the sounds of battle and then cherish our peace.

He died at the age of 78 in a hospital close to his summer home at Frankfort, Michigan, after a respiratory illness.

“Mr. Lincoln’s Army” is a non-fiction book that was released in 1951. A vivid account of the early battles. This is a riveting history about the early years of the Civil War when this fledgling Union Army took its first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan.

Following the secession of the Southern states, the beleaguered President Abraham Lincoln entrusted the charismatic and dashing McClellan with the creation of the Union Army of the Potomac and with the responsibility of leading it to a decisive and swift victory against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Even though he was embraced by the hero-hungry North and a brilliant tactician that was beloved by his troops, his ambition and ego ultimately put him at loggerheads with his commander-in-chief, a man that McClellan considered to be unworthy of the presidency. His weaknesses were exposed during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in all of American military history, which ended in a stalemate despite the fact the Confederate troops were incredibly outnumbered. Lincoln, after Antietam, ordered McClellan’s removal from command, and the Union entered into the war’s next chapter having suffered thousands of casualties, and with major uncertainty ahead of them.

Bruce Catton, America’s premier chronicler of the nation’s brutal conflict, is renowned for his unparalleled abilities to bring a vivid and detailed immediacy to military strategy sessions and Civil War battlefields. With tremendous insight and depth, he presents legendary commanders and common soldiers in all of their heartbreaking and complex humanity.

“U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition” is a non-fiction book that was released in 1954. A concise biography about the legendary Union general and controversial US president.

Bruce explores the legacy and life of one of the nation’s most understood heroes: Ulysses S. Grant. In this classic work, Grant emerges as this complicated figure whose own accomplishments have much too often been overlooked or downplayed.

He starts with Grant’s youth and service as a young lieutenant under General Zachary Taylor during the Mexican-American War. He recounts Grant’s subsequent disgrace, from his forced resignation for drinking and then his failures as a salesman and a citizen farmer. Then he chronicles his redemption during the Civil War, seeing Grant rise all the way from the rank of an unknown soldier to commanding general of the US Army and the Union’s savior.

This details all of Grant’s signature campaigns: From Fort Henry, Shiloh, and the Siege of Vicksburg to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Ulysses won national renown. Then, while he was a two-term president, he achieved numerous underrated successes which must figure into any telling of his life.

From Grant’s childhood in Ohio to his last days in New York, this illuminating and succinct bio is required reading for anybody interested in American history.

“The Coming Fury: The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume 1” is a non-fiction book that was released in 1961. With stunning insights and detail, America’s most prominent Civil War historian recreates this war from its opening months to its bloody and final end.

Every volume of the trilogy delivers a complete listening experience. Volume 1 offers up the split Democratic Convention in the spring of 1860 up to the first battle of Bull Run.