Tom Chaffin, Author . Hill & Wang $30 (592p) ISBN 978-0-8090-7557-7
John Charles Frémont (1813–1890), nicknamed "the Pathfinder" in recognition of his groundbreaking expeditions to map the American West, is not as well known as Lewis and Clark, but with this superb biography, the reader is soon...
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Tom Chaffin, Author . Hill and Wang $25 (432p) ISBN 978-0-8090-9511-7
When the Union navy blockaded Southern ports during the Civil War, the Confederates dispatched commercial raiders to prey on private Union ships. One of these raiders was the C.S.S. Shenandoah
, a British auxiliary steamer purchased by Confederate...
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Tom Chaffin, Author . Hill & Wang $26 (324p) ISBN 978-0-8090-9512-4
This lively account of the first submarine to sink an opposing ship is an excellent niche history. Chaffin (Sea of Gray
) relates that H.L. Hunley was neither soldier nor engineer, but an adventurous New Orleans attorney turned exporter who wanted...
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Tom Chaffin. St. Martin’s, $29.99 (528p) ISBN 978-1-250-11372-6
Through extensive reliance on Thomas Jefferson’s and the Marquis de Lafayette’s writings, along with their contemporaries’, Chaffin (Giant’s Causeway) burnishes his reputation as a popular historian with this compulsively readable deep dive into “the
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Tom Chaffin. Pegasus, $28.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-64313-908-1
Historian Chaffin (Revolutionary Brothers) delivers a granular look at Charles Darwin’s journey aboard the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Drawing on Darwin’s voluminous diaries and letters and the writings of Capt. Robert FitzRoy and others onboard,...
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