American Civil War

John M. Coski is author of The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. The book looks at the flag's history and the various meanings attached to it. Some people view it as a symbol of white supremacy and racial injustice; others think it represents a rich Southern heritage. Coski is historian and library director at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

Surgeon and medical historian Ira Rutkow's new book is Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. Rutkow is also the author of Surgery: An Illustrated History, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

He wrote the introduction and commentary for the new book The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of The Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times. McPherson is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of many books on the Civil War era including Battle Cry of Freedom.

Jay Winik's new book, a bestseller, is April 1865: The Month That Saved America (HarperCollins). He writes that April 1865 is a month that could have unraveled the American nation. Instead it saved it. During that month the war ended with Lee surrender, Lincoln was assassinated, and the rebuilding of the nation began. Winik is a senior scholar at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street Journal reporter Tony Horwitz has written "Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War". It is published by Pantheon. Horwitz explores the subculture of Civil War re-enactment fanatics. Many of these wannabe rebels will run barefoot, sleep in the rain, and starve themselves to recreate the conditions of battle to get a "period rush". Horwitz won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting at the Wall Street Journal and is the author of "Baghdad Without a Map" and "One for the Road".

Historian James McPherson is a Professor of American History at Princeton University. He's written eleven books about the Civil War, including his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Battle Cry of Freedom." His latest book is "For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War" (Oxford University Press). Drawing on 25,000 letters and 250 private diaries, McPherson looks at why so many soldiers willingly risked their lives to fight in the war.

Writer Shelby Foote has created a niche for himself as a civil war historian. He is best known for his three volume history of the Civil War, called "The Civil War: A Narrative." He has just written a new book, "Stars in Their Courses," which re-creates the three-day Gettysburg Campaign. He was also the narrator of the eleven-hour PBS series "The Civil War," which aired in 1990.

Wills has analyzed the legendary speech in a new book called "Lincoln At Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America." He says that, speaking for only three minutes that day, Lincoln changed the history of American political thought.

Journalist and writer Tom Wicker grew up in the South. He joined the staff of the New York Times in 1960 and has worked for the paper since then. Wicker was one of the journalists covering President Kennedy's visit to Dallas in 1963, and his op-ed column "In the Nation," is nationally syndicated. Wicker has written non-fiction and fiction books. His latest novel, "Unto this Hour," is based in part on stories from his grandmother about her life in the Confederacy. The novel is set in the Civil Battle, the Second Bull Run.