Stackpole Books

Bonefish Dreams is a light-hearted but fact-filled romp through a novelist’s almost forty-year obsession with fly fishing. Prepare to be informed and entertained by this worldwide, how-to guidebook that visits resplendent saltwater flats, up-scale lodges, and some celebrities while introspectively examining the soul of the fly-fishing angler.

From Brandywine to Yorktown, follow the astonishing real-life journey of the Revolutionary War’s most mythic warrior. “One-Man Army” was George Washington’s nom de guerre for Peter Francisco. Abducted from the Azores and deposited in the colony of Virginia at the age of four, little Pedro Francisco was an orphan from a strange land in the New World. Renamed Peter Francisco, the youngster found a home under indenture to Patrick Henry’s uncle as a blacksmith. Peter was present for Henry’s famous speech, hearing firsthand the words “Give me Liberty or Give me Death.” By the age of fourteen, he would grow to 6 feet-6 inches and 260 pounds. He would fashion himself an apex warrior serving both in the patriot infantry and cavalry. In his capacity as a soldier, Peter Francisco participated in some of the fiercest fighting, witnessed the greatest events, and met an astounding number of luminaries from early America headlined by generals George Washington, Nathanael Greene, and the Marquis de Lafayette. All told, Peter fought in at least ten battles and received six gruesome wounds as he dispatched over 20 enemy soldiers . . . mostly by the bayonet and a 6-foot broadsword commissioned for him by Washington. His feats of courage and strength were legendary as he is reputed to have carried a half-ton cannon from the battlefield at Camden. Postwar, he became a planter and businessman. Endeavoring to educate himself, he overcame illiteracy and developed into a voracious reader. As a veteran, the ”Virginia Giant” was sought out for meetings by the Secretary of State and was received in the home of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was thrice married into Virginia society, a father of six, and a fixture in the Commonwealth serving as Sergeant at Arms for the legislature late in life. Known to all throughout the newly independent thirteen states, Peter Francisco’s exploits were all but lost to history . . . until now.

Stop the Revolution is the fascinating story surrounding the British effort to bring the American Revolution to a peaceful end. It details the fateful September 11, 1776, meeting on Staten Island between British Admiral Lord Richard Howe and Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge. Stop the Revolution provides a compelling glimpse into politics, military diplomacy, and American character at the dawn of independence. This book covers early America from the eyewitness viewpoints of a feisty English traveler, a distressed Lutheran pastor, a precocious young lady, two sympathetic British officers, and an assortment of eccentric Founding Fathers

The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the Civil War’s turning points—and one of its bloodiest clashes of arms. At places now etched in history—Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, Cemetery Ridge—the carnage was horrific: some 50,000 men became casualties, about half of them wounded in need of medical care. During the battle’s three days, and for months after, a thousand surgeons—military as well as civilian, southern but mostly northern—provided care to the wounded in conditions that beggared the imagination and stretched the limits of nineteenth-century medicine. Drawing on nearly a decade of research, historian Barbara Franco stitches together medical history, military history, and Civil War history to highlight the work of the surgeons of Gettysburg.The medical staff of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia had their hands—and medical tents and wagons—full even before the battle started. On the march for nearly a month, from central Virginia to southern Pennsylvania, soldiers fell out of the ranks daily with heat stroke, exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition, injuries to feet and legs, wounds from skirmishes with the enemy, and a gut-wrenching array of illnesses, from dysentery to typhoid fever, whose causes were still poorly understood. Doctors and surgeons treated the sick and hurt while on the move themselves, working around the clock to keep the armies in fighting condition.Once the shooting started on the morning of July 1, 1863, the situation became chaotic as medical personnel hurried to Gettysburg, where the fallen littered fields, woods, and town and makeshift hospitals opened in churches, barns, and other buildings. As surgeons settled in overnight, so did the armies, who unleashed hell on each other on July 2 and July 3, culminating in the devastation of Pickett’s Charge. Chaos became nightmare as the wounded flooded hospital tents and surgeons went about the grisly work of treating bloodied and mangled soldiers, triaging patients, amputating limbs, and performing a narrow range of other surgeries, such as trephination of the skull. Surgeons worked in primitive field conditions with little rest or sleep while the battle still raged around them, the wounded groaned and cried, and gruesome scenes unfolded by the minute. Ether and chloroform were available for anesthesia, and morphine for pain, but the era did not yet have antibiotics or an understanding of germs, hygiene, and the need for sterile equipment. The work of surgeons continued long after the two armies left. A massive hospital camp was established, and thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers were treated until the facility finally closed the following November.

In this unforgettable narrative of D-Day, Joseph Balkoski describes the minute-by-minute combat as it unfolded on Omaha Beach, allowing soldiers to speak for themselves as they recall their attempts to maneuver bombers through heavy cloud cover, the claustrophobic terror aboard transports, and the relentless fire that greeted them on the beach. Equal parts oral history and meticulous reconstruction, Omaha Beach is the closest the modern reader can get to experiencing the Normandy landings firsthand.

Sharpshooters were the elite of the Union army. Clad in green uniforms and equipped with the era’s latest rifles and scopes, they took up positions out in front of the infantry, where they targeted Confederate officers or skirmished with enemy soldiers. However they were used, sharpshooters formed an important presence on battlefields throughout the Civil War, and yet most accounts have tended to focus on their distinctive uniforms and cutting-edge equipment rather than on their combat performance. Without slighting the role played by their gear, especially their rifles, Thunderbolt to the Rebels tells the story of these Civil War deadeyes on battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg and beyond.During the first year of the Civil War, engineer and inventor Hiram Berdan proposed the creation of a unit of marksmen armed with Sharps rifles, and thus were born the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters. Drawn heavily from the Upper Midwest and New England, as well as Pennsylvania, the soldiers had to pass a marksmanship test to join: 10 shots in a 10-inch-diameter circle from 200 yards. They were issued green uniforms for better camouflage, which also helped Confederate riflemen target them. The job of a sharpshooter was dangerous and demanding – much of it out in front of the army, much of it alone – but the 1st and 2nd U.S.S.S. accomplished their missions and made a difference on the battlefield.Thunderbolt to the Rebels uses primary sources, especially eyewitness accounts from veterans, to reveal how these elite marksmen lived, fought, and died during the Civil War.

Although the assault on Utah Beach ultimately became one of the most successful military operations of World War II, its outcome was anything but certain. Not only was Utah the most isolated of the five D-Day beaches, but the airborne assault was of unprecedented size and complexity. Despite the perils, American troops confidently cascaded into that far corner of Normandy and contributed decisively to the Allied triumph on D-Day. With verve and authority, Balkoski describes how that victory was won.