Civil War Stories [Dover]
by Ambrose Bierce
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Sixteen dark and vivid selections by a great satirist and short-story writer. "A Horseman in the Sky," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "Chickamauga," "A Son of the Gods," "What I Saw of Shiloh," "Four Days in Dixie," and 10 more. Masterly tales offer excellent examples of Bierce's dark pessimism and storytelling power.Tags
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I think every time I read "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" I find it imaginative, affecting, and worth reading. Bierce's reportage-like vignettes of solider life ring true from that veteran and they are very good and feel like real time capsules: "What I Saw of Shiloh" and "Four Days in Dixie". The bulk of the collection feels very formulaic and predicable where a final sentence summons a cruel, lethal irony of the brother-against-brother vein: man shoots enemy father, artillerist order to fire on own house in artillery duel, etc. This weighs down the collection.
Personal account of the Civil War through short stories. An early O. Henry w a number of surprising and jarring endings. The early stories were better because the later stories were so similar. But a good account of a major destabilizing and long lasting upheaval which changed the country as told from a personal point of view.
Bierce served in the Union Army and was seriously wounded. After the war, he became a journalist and writer. These stories are gleaned from his publish collections so the editors probably considered these his best. I found them uneven but there were several that will stick with me especially the story, " A Horseman in the Sky", in which a father and son find themselves on opposite sides although the reader is not made aware that the father is in the army until the final line of the narrative. The concluding line reminded me of an O. Henry story ending.
Bierce was noted for his dark view of life and it is very evident in this collection. Some of the descriptions of battlefields & the wounds suffered by the soldiers could have been taken show more from the WW II memoir, "With the Old Breed". show less
Bierce was noted for his dark view of life and it is very evident in this collection. Some of the descriptions of battlefields & the wounds suffered by the soldiers could have been taken show more from the WW II memoir, "With the Old Breed". show less
A collection of short stories from the civil war by someone who was there. Too gruesome and enamored with war for my taste. Stories end with an ironic twist but often the same twist.
No other writer puts the reader into the soul of the soldier better than Mr. Bierce. His experience as a reconnaissance officer gave him the training to observe and repair to the rear with detail etched in mind, which he transcribed into his short stories. Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a prime example as is Chicamauga. One of the very few America authors appreciated by the Brits in the 19th century. And with good reason
Ambrose Bierce served during the American Civil War, serving as a cartographer and officer for the Union. In these 16 compelling tales, Bierce conveys the sights and sounds from a soldier's perspective of the war, ranging from being in the heart of battle in "What I Saw of Shiloh" to a young boy lost in the woods in "Chickamauga" to tales of the supernatural and of odd events, including "One of the Missing" -- a chilling tale of a soldier in an abandoned house -- and his famous "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge." Bierce's no-nonsense style puts the reader in the heart of the action, making the reader take an active part in the events.
better than one would expect.
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Author Information
552+ Works 15,265 Members
Ambrose Bierce was a brilliant, bitter, and cynical journalist. He is also the author of several collections of ironic epigrams and at least one powerful story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Bierce was born in Ohio, where he had an unhappy childhood. He served in the Union army during the Civil War. Following the war, he moved to San show more Francisco, where he worked as a columnist for the newspaper the Examiner, for which he wrote a number of satirical sketches. Bierce wrote a number of horror stories, some poetry, and countless essays. He is best known, however, for The Cynic's Word Book (1906), retitled The Devil's Dictionary in 1911, a collection of such cynical definitions as "Marriage: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two." Bierce's own marriage ended in divorce, and his life ended mysteriously. In 1913, he went to Mexico and vanished, presumably killed in the Mexican revolution. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Civil War Stories [Dover]
- Original title
- Civil War Stories
- Original publication date
- 1994
- Important places
- United States
- Important events
- American Civil War
- Disambiguation notice
- This Dover edition, first published in 1994, is a new selection of sixteen stories from The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volumes I and II, first published in 1909 by The Neale Publishing Company, New York. The stories a... (show all)re printed here unabridged, with a new introductory Note specially prepared for this edition. Do not combine with any other collections by Ambrose Bierce.
Contents:
・What I Saw at Shiloh
・Four Days in Dixie
・A Horseman in the Sky
・An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
・Chickamauga
・A Son of the Gods
・One of the Missing
・Killed at Resaca
・The Affair at Coulter's Notch
・The Coup de Grâce
・Parker Adderson, Philosopher
・An Affair of Outposts
・The Story of a Conscience
・One Kind of Officer
・George Thurston
・The Mocking-Bird
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- 862
- Popularity
- 31,443
- Reviews
- 7
- Rating
- (3.95)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- UPCs
- 2
- ASINs
- 9
