One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on February 17, 1864, a Confederate submarine made the first successful attack in history, sinking the USS Housatonic while trying to break the Federal blockade during the Civil War. Like a bee inserting its stinger and then...
Whenever I came off the field after a day playing vintage baseball, my hands were often stinging something fierce. That's because we played by 1860 rules, which meant NO GLOVES. And since I played third base for the Danville Voles, I sometimes had to field a sharp...
Edna Greene Medford became a historian at a time when the legacy of Abraham Lincoln had lost some of its luster in the African American community. So she said she never had any plans to specialize on Lincoln. But Professor Medford can credit C-SPAN for changing those...
My two worlds converged recently. In my world as a writer for the University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I recently did a story about the "Myth of Black Confederates"--a subject that directly applied to my other world as a writer of historical...
I am thrilled to announce that a New York film and television company has purchased the screenplay of The Disappearing Man, with the goal of bringing Henry "Box" Brown's story to the screen. Many people have told me that my novels read like movies, so it is only...
Timothy Webster, the most famous spy during the first year of the Civil War, first encountered the Lincoln League when he was taken to a secluded hideout in the woods. He was taken there by the African American spy, John Scobell--the hero of my new novel, The Lincoln...
Print copies of the The Lincoln League are now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sources. It's also available as an e-book on Kindle, Nook, and iBook. The Lincoln League is based on the life of John Scobell, one of the first African American...
You can now purchase my new novel, The Lincoln League, in e-book formats--Kindle, iBook, and Nook. The Lincoln League is inspired by the true story of John Scobell, one of the first African American spies for the U.S. intelligence service. The novel also follows the...
During the past month, I have been doing research on the wet-plate photographic method, also known as the collodion process. This early photographic process was introduced in the 1850s, and by the time the Civil War began it had replaced the earlier daguerreotype...