Author(s): Amanda Foreman

HISTORY

'Amanda Foreman's magnificent book provides a completely fresh perspective on the first great modern conflict. Weaving together a vast panoply of people and events, it dramatically brings alive this extraordinary period.'ANTONY BEEVOR A World on Firetells, with extraordinary sweep, one of the least known great stories of British and American history. As America descended into Civil War, British loyalties were torn between support for the North, which was against slavery, and defending the South, which portrayed itself as bravely fighting for its independence. Rallying to their respective causes, thousands of Britons went to America as soldiers - fighting for both Union and Confederacy - racing ships through the Northern blockades, and as observers, nurses, adventurers, guerillas and spies. Using a wealth of previously unpublished letters and journals, Amanda Foreman gives fresh accounts of Civil War battles by seeing them through the eyes of British journalists and myriad soldiers on both sides, from flamboyant cavalry commanders to forcibly conscripted private soldiers. Foreman tells this epic yet intimate story of enormous personalities, tense diplomacy and torn loyalties as history in the round, captivating her readers with the experience of total immersion in this titanic conflict. Amanda Foreman is the author of the international bestseller Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire(1999) which has been translated into thirteen languages, won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography and inspired the film The Duchess, released in 2008. Foreman received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998 and is currently a research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.