Civil War Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

Book Description

Sixteen dark and vivid selections by 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. Note.

Customer Reviews:

Exceptionally Good Collection - Great Reading.......2005-11-06

Ambrose Bierce was not a likeable individual; he was often acerbic, sarcastic, and even mean spirited. Nonetheless, he created remarkably good short stories. This collection shares a common theme, the Civil War, but the individual stories belong to many different genre and will appeal to a wide audience. There is no need to be a Civil War enthusiast to enjoy this collection.

Ambrose Bierce fought in several bloody battles in the west in the Civil War including Shiloh and Chickamauga, is credited with rescuing wounded comrades under fire, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. The first story - What I Saw of Shiloh - is a 17-page fascinating, occasionally critical, first person account of his participation.

The next story - Four Days in Dixie - is another first person account, but I simply do not know whether Bierce was being truthful or not. Whether the truth, an exaggeration, or perhaps a fabrication, Four Days in Dixie is entertaining reading.

The remaining fourteen stories are clearly fiction and are characterized by unusual perspectives and unexpected endings. The tales of Ambrose Bierce not only make exciting, entertaining reading, but they are often thought provoking. The endings often come as a surprise, and leave the reader pondering the unusual outcome.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a good example. This story spans several genre, is not easily classified, and has an unexpected ending. This remarkable story has been recreated as a screen play and may be familiar to many readers from black and white television reruns of the Twilight Zone series.

This collection is uniformly good and warrants more than one reading. This Dover Thrift Edition is definitely a bargain.

A Soldier's View of the Civil War.......2005-10-18

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. A great collection of stories from one of America's best writers.

HISTORY IN THE 1ST PERSON...............2005-09-04

Bierce writes with the eye of a skeptic and beyond the hurahhs and romantic vision of war. Given his later life the war apparently made an immpression on him which lasted till death.
The carnage, vile bloddy scenes, the death never left him and it was obvious in his writings and life. Good book to see the unvarnished truth!!

Ambrose Bierce: Hero/Genius/Necromancer.......2004-11-11

Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War soldier who participated in many bloody campaigns. And the stories contained herein this title, are the output of his frustration over the violence and senseless destruction of that time.

His trademark wit abounds throughout, which isn't of the Jay Leno "Ha-ha! Look at me! I'm a big-chinned clown!" sort, but rather of the "Look at how terribly cruel people are!" sort. The stark dialog with its terse exchange between characters, transcends the page to imprint upon the mind of the reader, that the world is a harsh foreboding place in which to attempt survival.

My favorite story is 'The Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge'. The descriptive narrative at Bierce's command, utilized to describe the hanging of a rebel spy, left me breathless and checking my neck for bruises.

Ambrose Bierce was a literary genius who never wrote his great novel. No, because such epic proportions were unnecessary. For Ambrose Bierce in short form, could convey all the depth and meaning of the universe, while resorting to only a modicum of grammar. He is the greatest humorist and wit that this country, and thereby the world, has ever produced. I miss him greatly.

This book stands as a vivid reminder, of that which led Bierce to become so wonderfully cynical. And this work should have the same effect upon all who dare read it. At least that is my hope.

Thoroughly modern, completely enthralling.......2002-09-23

You would never think of these stories as having been written in the 19th century, but they were. Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran who seems almost to have tried to exorcise the horrors of the war he lived by writing about it. The result is gripping and utterly believable; the style is immediate, you-are-there, not-one-word-too-many. Not the flowery elaborate style you might have associated with Victorian prose.

The results convey the horrors of war as well as anything written in your lifetime. The story about the little boy who gets lost near his home when it is surrounded by a battle...I don't think I'll ever forget it. I won't spoil if for you but you've got to read it. If you think that 130+-year-old stories have nothing to say to you, give these a try, you will see otherwise.

Not to mention the Dover version is NOT EVEN TWO DOLLARS at the time of this writing. You spent more than the price of this book on your coffee this morning, I'll bet. What have you got to lose? Add it to a Supersaver order, there won't even be a shipping charge. Best pocket change you will ever have spent on a book.

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Descriptive Civil War Stories

Civil War

The Graphic Violence of War With Twists At The End

The best kept secret in American literature:

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce

ASIN: 0517150131
Release Date: 1996-04-15

Book Description

This powerful collection contains the very best of this world-renowned author's writings. All of the short stories and factual accounts of the Civil War presented here form a searing, unflinching portrait of this terrible war. For fiction and non-fiction fans and history buffs alike.

Customer Reviews:

Descriptive Civil War Stories.......2005-12-04

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War has everything you could ask for from a non-fiction, storytelling book about the Civil War. It is filled will all sorts of war memoirs and stories from his experiences and experiences of others throughout the Civil War. There are gruesome explanations of brains oozing out of a head in the war memoir "What I Saw at Shiloh," dead bodies covering the ground and endless thunderstorms. Alongside these dismal recounts of the Civil War, there are also stories of loyalty, family and courage. This contrast of the positives and negatives in the war makes this book very interesting. One page it will be raining and there are dead bodies on the ground. The next page is filled with sunlight and untouched and uninhabited forests. My favorite story would have to be "What I Saw at Shiloh," but there are several that are very good. All of them are extremely descriptive, too. No details are left out. Anyone who stays tuned to all of Grandpas old war stories would definitely like this book. It is filled with enough non-fictional material to keep you on edge for quite some time.

Civil War.......2004-06-25

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War is a bit of a mixed bag; it contains a handful of non-fiction articles and a number of non-fiction `War Stories.' All deal with topics common to war, some specific to the American Civil War - there are tales of courage, obedience, the foolishness of generals and the effect of civil war on families. And, as William McCann puts it in his introduction to this volume, "in these creations his lifelong obsession with death and the macabre calamity were fruitfully and not incongruously employed."
That `obsession' becomes a little overbearing at times. In an otherwise pedestrian recollection in "What I Saw of Shiloh" the reader stumbles across this arresting image of a wounded Federal sergeant: "A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain. One of my men whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and too many were looking." You either laugh, cringe, or close the book for good when you come across passages like this. In similarly expressive terms, in both fiction and non-fiction, Bierce describes the effects of wild swine on dead and wounded soldiers. If you're squeamish consider yourself warned.
My objection to Bierce's `obsession' is that it tends to unbalance his work. The images are so strong they tend to drown out the larger themes. In a month I will hard pressed to remember much of anything he had to say about Shiloh, but I'll long remember the Federal soldier with the drooling brain.
Save for a sprinkling of startling images, the non-fiction pieces are undistinguished. You can go to a hundred other sources for more informative, and entertaining, reminiscences.
The fiction is another matter. Bierce's justifiably famous "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is included. In the compressed space of the short story, and some of these stories are very short indeed, Bierce treats difficult themes with surprising deftness and sensitivity. In "Parker Anderson, Philosopher" a Rebel spy is interrogated by a slower witted Federal general. The spy treats the threat of his imminent death, he is to be executed at dawn, in a cavalier manner. With great economy Bierce takes this tale of the meaning of courage and turns it upside down.
My favorite piece in the book was "One Kind of Officer," a tale which literally and figuratively treats the fog of war. A weaker entry is "One of the Missing," a story of a sharpshooter in General Sherman's army who is pinned beneath a collapsed building with his loaded and cocked hair-trigger rifle pointed at his forehead. Bierce sometimes forces things and his work suffers for it. In another story it's more a disappointment than anything to discover that the cannoneer was bombarding his own home all the time, slaughtering his family because of orders from a twisted commander and a deeply ingrained sense of obedience. Too convenient, too contrived. It's an author going for the "Aha" moment, a cheap and manipulative trick that is beneath Bierce's talent.
Civil War buffs should enjoy Ambrose Bierce's Civil War immensely. There are plenty of gems, and even the common stones have their moments.

The Graphic Violence of War With Twists At The End.......2000-12-31

I read this book when I was doing research about one of the taboos of warfare. That was the discussion of the Coup De Grace of a fellow soldier. During my research I found that virtually no one had ever written (either in books or screenplays) about this with the exception of Bierce. It is an interesting paradox to ask yourself whether you would have the capability to put a friend out of their misery rather than let them suffer if you knew that help was not available. In fact, Bierce's short story is entitled, "The Coup De Grace". You'll find it and 27 others in this volume. The most famous is, "An Occurrence At Owl Creek". A story that was made into a short film and was the Short Subject winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and earned an Academy Award in 1964 as best Foreign Film.

All of the stories you find in this book are told with the tight, economical style of Bierce and many have an O'Henry or Sterling twist at the end. They are told in the frank and bloody prose that Bierce witnessed (and physically experienced) first hand as an Officer in the Union Army. As one reads these stories you can clearly see the basis for Bierce's caustic and acidulous writing style that stayed with him throughout his life including as a columnist for William Randolph Hearst at the San Francisco Examiner and until he walked away into the Mexican desert in 1913. His demise is the source of great conjecture (as he would have wanted it) but that is for other books about the man and his writing.

The best kept secret in American literature:.......1998-05-08

Ambrose Bierce, a soldier in the Civil War, focused on the war in many of his short stories, which are truly phenominal. With the surreal and supernatural sensibilities of Poe and ironic endings worthy of O. Henry, Bierce deserves a place among our most treasured authors.

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Worth reading for the speculation alone -- maybe Bierce didn't die in Mexico
Bierce a lesser figure?
Bierce
Definative Bio of Bierce
A momentum-gaining insight into a man for all eras

Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company
Roy Morris
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

A lively and compelling portrait of one of the most acerbic and distinctive voices in American literature, Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company is a clear-eyed but sympathetic account of a complex individual at odds with his country, his family, his times, and himself. The only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, Bierce discovered in the conflict a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals--be they romantic, religious, or political. His groundbreaking short stories of the war, including his most famous work, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," have had a lasting influence on every subsequent American author dealing with war. And the heartless, hilarious aphorisms in his caustic lexicon The Devil's Dictionary have entered, often uncredited, our national consciousness. In this insightful, critically acclaimed biography, the first comprehensive study in almost fifty years, Roy Morris, Jr., accounts for both the influential art that Ambrose Bierce made from a harsh and unforgiving vision--and the high price he had to pay for it in loneliness, rancor, and spiritual isolation.

Customer Reviews:

Worth reading for the speculation alone -- maybe Bierce didn't die in Mexico.......2006-04-29

Conventional wisdom and history books have it that Ambrose Bierce died in Mexico during the Revolution. But Morris, in this in-depth biography, offers a fairly plausible alternative. (Sorry, not giving the store away as part of the review; you're going to have to get your hands on this book.)

Much of the rest of the speculation in which Morris engages is psychological. He first analyses Bierce's childhood and parents, then takes note of his Civil War head wound, and wonders just how much the two of these things combined to contribute to the Ambrose Bierce we know today.

That said, while not denying either childhood or adult causes of personality development -- or personality change -- I give more credence to genetic causes, i.e., the ideas of evolutionary psychology, properly applied.

I find it likely that Bierce was pretty much born with tendencies toward the character he later exhibited. His upbringing and his war wound may have intensified it, but I think he came by much of his cynicism naturally. Life events probably added the dollop of churlishness to it.

I teeter on a rating and end up at 4 stars. If I were to fine tune, it would probably be about 3 2/3 stars. The psycho-speculation is interesting, but in addition to being incomplete, if not somewhat wrong, too much of a focus on it means less focus on historical biography or on literary analysis.

Bierce a lesser figure?.......2006-02-27

I am perfectly aware that to say that Ambrose Bierce was the most original, provocative and fascinating of all American writers (not to say the most brilliant of all) is like preaching in the desert. It is probably going to cost me a lot of negative feedback to say what I'm going to say, so I won't extend myself more than what it is absolutely necessary in order to speak my mind.

The main reason for me to write this review is that this laughable biography by Roy Morris is so flagrantly detrimental on Bierce's accomplishments that I personally didn't want to lose the opportunity to advise you against reading such a lot of blather. The author even puts an awful novel like "The Red Badge of Courage" above Bierce's war stories (hilarious, isn't it?). After that, what else can be said about this biographer's ineptitude? Let's draw a veil over it and forget it.

Anyone wishing to know something about the skilled artistry and posterior influence of the Ohio writer would be better looking for another book written by someone who had actually grasped Bierce's significance. But the best thing to do is reading Bierce's stories on your own and make up your mind about them instead of losing your time with the prejudices and lack of perspective of others.

After reading some passages of this book, I reassure myself in my opinion that literary critics are, well, funny...

In a world where mediocrity runs rampant and where authors like Mark Twain and the hideous Henry James have always been praised, it is difficult that really worthy authors like Bierce can find the recognition they deserve. But, perhaps, it is better that way, I don't know.

What I know for sure (because I've seen it) is that, when a genius is born, all nefarious souls tend to ally themselves against it. Anyway, how could a writer like Bierce be enjoyed by a majority? It's impossible.

Well, I don't think this review is gonna get anywhere, so I'd better stop here. Thank you for your reading.

Note- sorry for any bad grammar on my part. I don't usually write in the language of the "Empire".

Bierce.......2005-10-06

"Bitter Bierce" they called him because of his scathing sarcasm. After the Civil War, in which he fought valiantly for four years, he went to San Francisco and began writing for the Hearst newspapers. Satire was his game. He wrote a couple of decent short stories ("Chickamauga" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"), THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, and that's about it (other books, mainly short story and poetry collections, have been forgotten, in some cases unfairly so). His wit, as revealed in the DICTIONARY is clever, but at times sophomoric. Influenced by Poe, many of his stories deal with the supernatural and are laced with horror. He disappeared in Mexico in 1913 and was never seen again. Speculation, from suicide to fighting for Pancho Villa, has been rampant ever since. Morris does a good job relating the events of Bierce's strange life, who must have been a very difficult man to know.

Definative Bio of Bierce.......2001-07-11

This book gives insight into one of the American literary greats. There are times that the book drags, but I think this is due as much to the author as to the fact that some moments in Bierce's life are so interesting that when you read about the "average" moments in his life, you are left, well , bored. This is a good book for a Bierce fan or someone that would like to learn about an American writer who, deservedly, lived in the shadow of Twain.

A momentum-gaining insight into a man for all eras.......1999-11-21

While early on the book lagged, it built momentum to the point where I had a hard time putting it down. Examining the circumstances that produced this complicated individual proved fascinating and heartbreaking. Outside events and Bierce himself conspired to find misery and disappointment at every turn. The book is sympathetic to Bierce, but not fawning- he's not praised as a great writer, but he is acknowledged to be the best writer among Civil War veterans. His newspaper columns are also praised, and the erosion of his patriotism after what he saw in the war (not just at Shiloh) is something that can be best understood by post Vietnam-era readers. Many of the cited quotes (particularly the bitingly critical ones) contain a sharp wit that can't be missed. I enjoyed the book and it encouraged me to read more about the era. Bierce was in many ways a forerunner of Walter Winchell (read Neal Gabler's great bio) and you can also see traces of modern observational humorists such as George Carlin. Piece of advice, though- don't tell anyone that they remind you of Bierce!

Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce

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short stories
Chilling to the bone!
LEST WE FORGET, OR BE SWAYED BY THE HISTORY BOOKSý

Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: Forge Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0765302446

Book Description

Ambrose Bierce didn't just write about the Civil War, he lived through it--on the battlefields and over the graves--and in doing so gave birth to a literary chronicle of men at war previously unseen in the American literary canon. The fact that some of these stories verged on the supernatural, others on factual reporting, and others on the fine line between humor and morbidity in no way detracts from their resonance to both the history of the war between the states and the imaginative historical literature in the tradition of Washington Irving.

Shadows of Blue & Gray collects all of Bierce's Civil War stories (twenty-seven in total) with six of his memoir pieces on his own experiences on the front lines.

This collection includes such classics as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "A Horseman in the Sky," "Parker Addison, Philosopher", and "A Bivouac of the Dead"; as well as lesser known stories and sketches such as "The Mockingbird" and "Two Military Executions" and memoirs of his experiences at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Franklin.

Customer Reviews:

short stories.......2007-03-28

A very good way to get a look at the civil war through short stories. Should be mandatory reading in every high school in the nation.

Chilling to the bone!.......2006-05-14

Ambrose Bierce participated in many of the great Civil War battles. While I realise this book is written as fiction I would submit to the reader that it is fact. Ambrose has this gifted way of speach that brings to life the horrors he witness. You will shiver with goose bumps! You won't sleep with the lights out after reading his stories. No way!
I could not put this chilling book down. It was as if it was possess! Ambrose disappeared in 1914 a old man who walked into Mexico. Maybe he is still walking and telling these stories. I would like to think so.

LEST WE FORGET, OR BE SWAYED BY THE HISTORY BOOKSý.......2003-05-06

It's easy to look back and view wars as things of glory - the history books tend to lead us in that direction by viewing the action from lofty heights, speaking in terms of armies and strategies and generals. The reality - as those who have `been there' know too well (and no, I'm not claiming to be a veteran) - is that the old adage is all too true: war is definitely hell, and we should never, ever forget that fact.

Ambrose Bierce is known today mainly through his fiction - many fine examples of which appear in this collection - and through THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY. He `might or might not' be the subject and/or inspiration for Carlos Fuentes' novel THE OLD GRINGO, also made into a film. His stories have a decidedly `creepy' feel to them - he was no Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps, but he was a talented writer nonetheless...and as not only the short stories, but also the non-fiction pieces collected here demonstrate, he was a careful and articulate observer. We are truly blessed that he chose to recount what he had seen, both in the form of short stories and memoirs. His disappearance in 1914 in Mexico has added to his mystique over the ensuing years.

The most famous of the short stories contained in this volume is undoubtedly `An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'. I remember reading it in high school (NO, I won't say how long ago that was...) - and it was filmed to great effect by director Roberto Enrico in 1962, and was subsequently aired in the US as an episode in the last season of THE TWILGHT ZONE on CBS. It won an Oscar in 1964 as Best Foreign Short Film. The story is a masterpiece of suspense - it's a great literary epitaph for Bierce.

Bierce served in the Civil War - he enlisted at its outset and saw quite a bit of action. He rose through the ranks to lieutenant and served on the staff of various high-ranking officers. It is his observations and experiences - and his empathy with the troops, the enlisted men, the common man - that lend such a value to his writings. Too much `Hollywood-izing' has been forced upon the truth - about the Civil War and almost everything the film industry touches. It's a treasure to have the pieces here to vividly remind us of what the experience was really like.

There is humor here as well - Bierce's wit was an acerbic sword, and he unsheathed it on the high and low alike, without sparing himself in the process. His characterizations of the generals under whom he served, as well as the enlisted soldiers, the post-war opportunists, and the intellectual crowd with whom he mingled both in the US and abroad, are rich indeed.

Book Description

In The Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce defined "war" as "a by-product of the arts of peace." A Civil War veteran, Bierce had absolutely no illusions about "courage," "honor," and "glory" on the battlefield. These stories form one of the great antiwar statements in American literature. Included here are the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Chickamauga, The Mocking Bird, The Coup de Grâce, Parker Anderson, Philosopher, and other stories celebrated for their intensity, startling insight, and mastery of form.

Customer Reviews:

Wars Were Brutal Long Before TV Discovered Them.......1997-06-06

No matter what it is called, be it the Civil War, the War Between the States or the War of Southern Secession, the time period 1861-65 was one of the most bloody, destructive and emotionally and ideologically charged periods in U.S. history. And no contemporary author had a better grasp of it than Union comabt veteran Ambrose Bierce, whose stories in this short but riveting collection are not dry historical abstractions nor a cold analysis of the decisions of senior leaders, but a graphic record of the everday sweat, endless terror and cruel, surreal absurdity of armed conflict.

From the eerie "Incident at the Owl Creek Bridge" to the gripping "Parker Adderson, Philosopher," Bierce honed the unique literary and expressive skills that served him well as a corrosive and controversial San Francisco newspaper columnist and astonishingly effective writer on horror and the occult. War to "Bitter Bierce" was the purest expression of the basic animal survival instinct; hardened and warped by endless fear, by the power of technological advances in weaponry and the stress and repeated brutality that turned ordinary human beings into ruthless killers--to the point where ideology and the color of the uniform no longer mattered.

Bierce's experiences and deep cynicism soon led him to believe that human beings, despite all of their apparent gifts, in reality could do little more than create brutal and meaningless tragedies. "War is a byproduct of the arts of peace," he was reported to have said, but these stories, a product of a bygone era, remain curiously contemporary because they tell us about everyday people--not unlike ourselves despite more than a century of difference--who fought a war, that, in light of the issues it raised and the multiple cultural forces it unleashed or redirected, has never really ended.

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Tales for Soldiers and Civilians
An Excellent Collection of Stories!

Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Ambrose Bierce , and Donald T. Blume
Manufacturer: Kent State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce

ASIN: 0873387899

Book Description

Witty, irreverent tales of war and the supernatural from the maverick misanthrope of American literature.

Questing after Pancho Villa's revolutionary forces, Ambose Bierce rode into Mexico in 1913 and completely vanished off the face of the earth. Though his ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day, Bierce's contribution to American letters rests firmly on the basis of his incomparable Devil's Dictionary and a remarkable body of short fiction. This new collection gathers some three dozen of Bierce's finest stories, including the celebrated Civil War fictions "An Occurrence at Owl Creek" and "Chickamauga," his macabre masterpieces "The Damned Thing" and "Moxon's Master," and his hilariously horrific "Oil of Dog" and "My Favorite Murder."

Tom Quirk, the volume's editor, provides a fascinating introductory essay, as well as indispensable explanatory notes, a glossary of military terms, and a catalog of Civil War battle sites and leaders.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Tom Quirk

Customer Reviews:

Tales for Soldiers and Civilians.......2002-04-20

A young northern soldier unknowingly kills his confederate father; a man is about to be hanged for tampering with a bridge during the Civil War but is freed when the rope breaks; a civilian finds a snake under his bed and freezes; and an invisible presence brutally kills a man. These are all plotlines from a few of the stories in Bierce's magnificent collection of short stories Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories. They are guaranteed to keep the reader in suspense and awaiting the always surprising conclusion. For anyone who loves great writing and irony, check out this collection of stories.

An Excellent Collection of Stories!.......2000-11-03

I always wanted to get around to reading Ambrose Bierce. Known as an iconoclast and an excellent satirist, Bierce is best known for his Devil's Dictionary. He's also known for the disappearing act he pulled in Mexico in 1913. I decided to give this short anthology a chance. If I liked his stories, I figured I'd buy some more of his writings. I will be reading more of his writings.

The recent movie _The Blair Witch Project_ has brought scary stories back into vogue. After reading this book, I realized you can make a direct connection from this film to Ambrose Bierce. The connection would pass through Stephen King and H.P.Lovecraft along the way. I've seen things in both of these writers that could have been lifted directly out of one of Bierce's stories. In Bierce's story, "The Damned Thing", with its talk about colors that can and can't be seen, I could have sworn I was reading Lovecraft. Bierce is a master at quick twists and shocking violence, and delivers scares fast and furious. I got chills with several of these short stories, which certainly makes for good horror reading.

The book gives the reader a sample of Bierce's short stories. Most of the stories are tied around American Civil War themes, which is no surprise as Bierce served in the Union army during that conflict. His experiences gave him the necessary frame of reference to write these dark stories. And when I say dark, I mean DARK! Some of these tales will make your jaw drop. The violence in them is extremely unsettling. Chickamauga and Oil of Dog are sickening, describing blown open heads and dead babies in graphic detail.

Did I mention Bierce's prose? Some of the best you'll read. His prose is so amazing that I found myself rereading some of his passages just so I could make sure I was getting the full meaning. It is that rich and textured. It's also extremely funny in places. In the introduction it is written that Bierce lived in England for several years and was embraced by the English, who are masters not only of the language, but also insults. I'm not surprised when I look at how he writes. He can pen an insult that would bring tears of joy to an Englishman's eyes.

Finally, Bierce's stories show incredible depth for the short story format. He ridicules false courage, irony, lawyers, and even unions in the story, "The Revolt of the Gods". I highly recommend that anyone not familiar with Ambrose Bierce give this book a read. It reads fast and you'll laugh and be shocked within the space of one page. Good stuff.

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Well Read Civil War Stories of Ambrose Bierce

The Civil War Tales of Ambrose Bierce
Timothy Patrick Miller
Manufacturer: American Listeners Theatre
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Sony WMFX479 Walkman

ASIN: 0964904004

Customer Reviews:

Well Read Civil War Stories of Ambrose Bierce.......1999-12-03

This book on tape is really moving. The stories come across very powerfully and bring home the emotional impact of the Civil War from the point of view of the soldiers and the civilians who were affected by the battles. Most memorable is the story of the child who gets lost behind the battle lines close to his farm. Listening to these stories makes them come alive more powerfully than simply reading the written words could possibly do. I highly recommend this book on tape.

The Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1 (Unabridged)

Average customer rating:

The Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1 (Unabridged)
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B0007Y9K7I

Average customer rating:

Civil War Short Stories of Ambrose B
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: UNIV OF NE + PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SHS6JM

Medientransfer: Kurzgeschichten in Kurzfilmen : der Civil War und seine kunstlerische Verarbeitung dargestellt an den Short Stories von Ambrose Bierce und ihren filmischen Adaptionen von Robert Enrico

Average customer rating:

Medientransfer: Kurzgeschichten in Kurzfilmen : der Civil War und seine kunstlerische Verarbeitung dargestellt an den Short Stories von Ambrose Bierce und ihren filmischen Adaptionen von Robert Enrico
Hans Gerhold
Manufacturer: Lit
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

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ASIN: 3886600629

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