Bruce Catton

Bruce Catton (1899 – 1978) was the Founding Editor of American Heritage and arguably the most prolific and popular of all Civil War historians. He wrote an astonishing 167 articles for American Heritage, and won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.

Catton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Gerald Ford, in 1977, the year before his death.

Articles by this Author

The Golden Dawn, February 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 2

Conquistadors And Saints, February 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 2

And In New England, February 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 2

The Way Of General Sherman, February 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 2

Reading, Writing, And History, December 1957 | Vol. 9, No. 1

“We Were There, Waiting—”, December 1957 | Vol. 9, No. 1

The repulse of Pickett’s charge, described in a little-known account written shortly after the battle by a Union officer

Error By Mrs. Stowe, October 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 6

And The Middle West, October 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 6

This Hallowed Ground, October 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 6

AN EXCERPT FROM A NEW BOOK WHICH TELLS HOW THE CIVIL WAR CAME TO ITS TERRIBLE, HAUNTING CONCLUSION

Reading, Writing And History, October 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 6

American Tragedy, October 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 6

Reading, Writing And History, August 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 5

Few memoirs in recent years have drawn more attention, or stirred up more of a controversy, than the book Three Years with Grant , written by Civil War newsman Sylvanus Cadwallader and edited by Benjamin P. Thomas.

Think Again, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

The Other Extreme, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

Let The People Know, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

Mr. Lincoln’s Weapons, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

Desolate South, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

The Town Hall, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

Reading, Writing And History, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

For An Emotional Understanding, June 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 4

The Oregon Country, April 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 3

Leader Of Lincoln?, February 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 2

The Famous Cyclorama Of The Great Battle Of Atlanta, February 1956 | Vol. 7, No. 2

There have been few more desperate fights than the one in which John B. Hood vainly tried to block the invasion of the South

History As A Cure, December 1956 | Vol. 8, No. 1

Reading, Writing And History, October 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 6

The Lower Depths, October 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 6

Debt To The Immigrant, October 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 6

Leader Of A Lost Cause, October 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 6

Reading, Writing And History, August 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 5

The Civil War: The Truth And The Legend, August 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 5

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.