• In the midst of life (Tales of soldiers and civilians). Soldiers. 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 ; One officer, one man ; George Thurston ; The mocking-bird
• Civilians. The man out of the nose ; An adventure at Brownville ; The famous Gilson bequest ; The applicant ; A watcher by the dead ; The man and the snake ; A holy terror ; The suitable surroundings ; The boarded window ; A lady from Redhorse ; The eyes of the panther

• Can such things be? The death of Halpin Frayser ; The secret of Macarger's Gulch ; One summer night ; The moonlit road ; A diagnosis of death ; Moxon's master ; A tough tussle ; One of twins ; The haunted valley ; A jug of sirup ; Staley Fleming's hallucination ; A resumed identity ; A baby tramp ; The night-doings at "Deadman's" ; Beyond the wall ; A psychological shipwreck ; The middle toe of the right foot ; John Mortonson's funeral ; The realm of the unreal ; John Bartine's watch ; The damned thing ; Haïta the shepherd ; An inhabitant of Carcosa ; The stranger
• The way of ghosts. Present at a hanging ; A cold greeting ; A wireless message ; An arrest
• Soldier folk. A man with two lives ; Three and one are one ; A baffled ambuscade ; Two military executions
• Some haunted houses. The isle of pines ; A fruitless assignment ; A vine on a house ; At old man Eckert's ; The spook house ; The other lodgers ; The thing at Nolan
• "Mysterious disappearances". The difficulty of crossing a field ; An unfinished race ; Charles Ashmore's trail

• The Devil's dictionary

• Bits of autobiography. On a mountain ; What I saw of Shiloh ; A little of Chickamauga ; The crime at Pickett's Mill ; Four days in Dixie ; What occurred at Franklin ; 'Way down in Alabam' ; Working for an Empress ; Across the plains ; The mirage ; A sole survivor

• Selected stories. Mrs. Dennison's head ; The man overboard ; Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General ; A bottomless grave ; For the Ahkhoond ; My favorite murder ; Oil of dog ; Ashes of the beacon.

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in Bierce's dictionary. There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen", and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another". This is a comprehensive, authoritative edition of a satiric masterpiece. This virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth. This edition is based on David E. Shultz and S.T. Joshi's investigation into the book's writing and publishing history. All of Bierce's known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in Bierce's dictionary. There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen", and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another". This is a comprehensive, authoritative edition of a satiric masterpiece. This virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth. This edition is based on David E. Shultz and S.T. Joshi's investigation into the book's writing and publishing history. All of Bierce's known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Title; Contents; I; II; III.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge opens with the story's hero, Peyton Farquhar, hanging bound from a bridge, awaiting hanging. Farquhar is a Confederate sympathizer in the American Civil War and has been brought to this end by a Union spy. The novel was unique in its time for its jumbled chronology and is also famous for its surprising conclusion.

This revised edition of Bierce's 1892 collection of "Soldiers" and "Civilians" tales aims to fill a void in American literature. A veteran of the Civil War and a journalist known for his integrity and satire, Bierce was also a short-story writer of considerable depth and power.
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A "dictionary" of barbed definitions by one of America's most caustic humorists includes cynical epigrams, maxims, essays, and verses that illustrate the irreverent humor of the nineteenth-century satirist as he lampoons cherished American traditions.

Alone among important American writers, Ambrose Bierce fought for four years in the Civil War. The writings he produced about that conflict comprise a body of work unique in merican literature. This volume gathers virtually everything Bierce wrote about the war, from letters composed on the field of battle to maps he drew as a topographical engineer, from his masterful short stories to his final bittersweet ruminations before he disappeared into Mexico in 1914. The collection is organized chronologically, following Bierce's participation in a wide range of battles, from the early skirmishes in the West Virginia mountains to the bloodbaths at Shiloh and Chickamauga and his near fatal wounding at Kennesaw Mountain. His overlapping accounts of these events provide a clear and compelling record of the sights and sounds of the battlefield, the psychological traumas the war induced in its soldiers, and the memories that would haunt survivors for the rest of their lives. In prose that anticipates the work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien, Bierce's writings unflinchingly tell the truth about the war. The volume includes a biographical introduction and comprehensive notes on all the writings and is suitable for classroom adoption and general readers alike.
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Ambrose Bierce didn't just write about the Civil War - he lived through it, on the battlefields and along the picket lines. In so doing he gave birth to a chronicles of men at war previously unseen in the American literary canon. That some of these stories verge on the supernatural, others on factual chronicles, and others balance on the thin line between humour and morbidity in no way detracts from their resonance both to the history of the War Between the States and the imaginative literature in the tradition of Washington Irving. Shadows Of Blue & Gray collects all of Bierce's Civil War stories - 27 in total - along with six of his memoirs on his own war experiences. Contents include 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.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A prolific journalist and author well known for his tales of horror and stories about the Civil War, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) was also a mordant commentator on the political, social, legal, and intellectual failings of his countrymen. Throughout his career, he remained an unapologetic curmudgeon who took a dim view of everything from trade unions and the temperance movement to Americans' insatiable thirst for money. Even the very principles of democracy did not escape his skeptical pen. This volume brings together a generous sampling of Bierce's scathing fictional satires, many of which have not been reprinted since their first appearance a century ago. In writing these works, Bierce often employed fanciful devices, such as assuming the perspective of a future historian looking back on the follies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among such selections, "Ashes of the Beacon" is perhaps the finest, with its trenchant comments on socialism, anarchy, and the problems of republican government. In another fictional piece, "The Land Beyond the Blow", Bierce recounts voyages to an imaginary world in the style of Gulliver's Travels, commenting on bizarre political and social customs that, not coincidentally, mirror America's own. The volume also includes a rich array of still-relevant nonfiction essays on such topics as capital punishment, the evils of insurance, and the unpleasant disposition of the canines that roam the nation's capital. These pieces reflect many of the same concerns Bierce addresses in his fictional satires, albeit in a more direct way. The selections are drawn from contributions to newspapers and magazines and from Bierce's Collected Works, andinclude many unsigned editorials that Bierce wrote for the San Francisco Examiner. Editors S. T. Joshi and David Schultz have thoroughly annotated the pieces and have written a substantial introduction outlining aspects of Bierce's political thought. The resulting volume is essential reading for anyone who appreciates lively commentary designed to puncture the hypocrisies and sentimentality of Bierce's contemporaries, whatever their beliefs. It fills a major gap in Bierce scholarship and allows us to see the world as this notorious cynic did.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Among this collection are Bierce's Civil War fictions "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamauga"; his macabre masterpieces; and his tales of supernatural horror.
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History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement. These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago-with or without the devil's help-can still draw blood today.
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• Introduction
• Note on the text
• Chronology?-- The Civil War (1861-1865)
• A Bivouac of the dead
• Battlefields and ghosts
• On a Mountain
• What I saw of Shiloh
• Stones River and Missionary Ridge
• A Little of Chickamauga
• The crime at Pickett's Mill
• A Letter from the front lines
• Four days in Dixie
• What occurred at Franklin
• The battle of Nashville
• Further memories of the Civil War
• The hesitating veteran
• The aftermath of the war (1865-1867)
• 'Way down in Alabam'
• Across the plains
• The mirage?-- An unexpected encounter
• Early days in San Francisco (1868-1872)
• A Wry self-portrait
• Justifications for satire
• The town crier's increasing fame
• The follies of religion
• Cheerful morbidity
• Women's rights
• A Cry from the heart?
• Some famous contemporaries
• A Lawsuit
• A Parting shot
• The English jaunt (1872-1875)
• First impressions of England
• Working for an empress
• The English literati
• That ghost of mine
• Return to San Francisco (1877-1879)
• Some self-descriptions

• Introduction / Page Smith
• An occurence 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
• The story of a conscience
• One kind of officer
• One officer, one man
• The mockingbird.

• Stories of the Civil War
• Californians
• Journalism, by and large
• Literature and the arts
• Women
• Religion and religiosity
• Lawyers and judges
• Politics and politicians
• Business and other social contracts
• Stories of the supernatural
• Write it right
• The Devil's dictionary
• Coda: on suicide.
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