18 books like The Unvanquished

What to read after The Unvanquished — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Crisis Winston Churchill · 1901 · ★ 3.8 · 561p · ≈ 18h · Challenging "The novel is set in the years leading up to the first battles of the U.S. Civil War, mostly in the divided state of Missouri. It follows the fortunes of young Stephen Brice, a man with Union and abolitionist sympathies, and his involvement with a Southern family."--Wikipedia Shares: Civil war, United States Civil War, United States, History

Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell · 1936 · ★ 4.3 · 824p · ≈ 27h · Challenging Margaret Mitchell's monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries. Today, more than 60 years after its initial publication, its… Shares: United States Civil War, Slavery, War stories, Historical Fiction

The dark forest Hugh Walpole · 1916 · 324p · ≈ 10h · Challenging John Durward and John Trenchard are two Englishmen who join a company of Russian doctors, nurses, and orderlies working on the Russian side of the Eastern Front at the height of World War I. Durward, the primary narrator, is a detached and seemingly-objective observer of events; his friend Trenchard is a dreamy, clumsy, and naive man whose fiancee, Marie Ivanova, is serving alongside him as a… Shares: World War I, War stories, Historical Fiction

Homegoing Yaa Gyasi · 2016 · ★ 4.5 · 320p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held… Shares: African American, Slavery, African Americans, Historical Fiction

The Killer Angels Michael Shaara · 1974 · ★ 4.3 · 360p · ≈ 12h · Moderate The Killer Angels (1974) is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the Union and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was… Shares: United States Civil War, War stories, Historical Fiction, History

Kindred Octavia E. Butler · 1979 · ★ 4.3 · 272p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more… Shares: African American, Slavery, African Americans

Army Life in a Black Regiment Thomas Wentworth Higginson · 1870 · ★ 3.9 · 232p · ≈ 7h · Challenging "Army Life in a Black Regiment has some claim to be the best written narrative to come from the Union [side] during the Civil War," wrote historian Henry Steele Commander. "Higginson's picture of the battle which was the origin of 'praise the Lord and pass the ammunition' and his reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the black regiment are unsurpassed for eloquence." A Union colonel wrote… Shares: United States Civil War, United States, History

The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane · 1871 · ★ 3.3 Henry Fleming, a young soldier in the American Civil War, grapples with fear, courage, and the realities of battle. He joins the Union army with grandiose ideas of heroism, but when he faces the brutal truth of war, he is overcome by fear and runs from the battlefield in his first encounter with the enemy. After fleeing, Henry is consumed with shame and guilt. He struggles internally,… Shares: War stories, United States, Historical Fiction

Drum-taps Walt Whitman · 1865 · 158p · ≈ 5h · Challenging "Walt Whitman worked as a nurse in an army hospital during the Civil War and published Drum-Taps, his war poems, as the war was coming to an end. Later, the book came out in an expanded form, including 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,' Whitman's passionate elegy for Lincoln. The most moving and enduring poetry to emerge from America's most tragic conflict, Drum-Taps also helped to… Shares: Civil war, History

An unkindness of ghosts Rivers Solomon · 2017 · ★ 3.9 · 344p · ≈ 11h · Moderate "Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For… Shares: African American, Slavery, African Americans

Whirlwind James Clavell · 1986 · ★ 4.3 · 1229p · ≈ 40h · Challenging Tehran, Iran 1979: Simmering religious tensions finally explode, and the Iranian people rise up against the Shah. The country, once secular, is now thrown back into an orthodoxy that threatens to tear it apart. The United States and Russia go on high alert, with warships heading to the Middle East. The region becomes a powder keg, waiting to explode. Caught up in the revolution are a British… Shares: War stories, Historical Fiction, History

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store James McBride · 2023 · ★ 3.9 · 561p · ≈ 18h · Moderate In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared… Shares: African American, Historical Fiction

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick Zora Neale Hurston · 2020 · ★ 4.3 · 192p · ≈ 6h · Moderate From “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison)—the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God—a collection of remarkable stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. New York Times’ Booksto Watch forBuzzfeed’sMost Anticipated BooksNewsweek’sMost Anticipated BooksForbes.com’sMost Anticipated BooksE!’sTop… Shares: African American, African Americans

The angels of Mons Arthur Machen · 1915 · ★ 3.1 · 86p · ≈ 2h · Challenging The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I. The story is fictitious, developed through a combination of a patriotic short story by Arthur Machen, rumours, mass hysteria and urban legend, claimed visions after the battle and also possibly deliberately seeded propaganda. Shares: World War I, War stories

In the Heat of the Night John Ball · 1981 · 176p · ≈ 5h · Moderate A small southern town in the 1960s. A musician found dead on the highway. It's no surprise when white detectives arrest a black man for the murder. What is a surprise is that the black man-Virgil Tibbs-is a skilled homicide detective, passing through racially tense Wells, South Carolina, on his way back to California. Even more surprising, Wells's new police chief recruits Tibbs to help with the… Shares: African American, African Americans

Friends Though Divided G. A. Henty · 1883 · 332p · ≈ 11h · Challenging My dear lads: Although so long a time has elapsed since the great civil war in England, men are still almost as much divided as they were then as to the merits of the quarrel, almost as warm partisans of the one side or the other. Most of you will probably have formed an opinion as to the rights of the case, either from your own reading, or from hearing the views of your elders. Shares: United States, Historical Fiction, History

To the Last Man Jeff Shaara · 2004 · ★ 4.5 · 636p · ≈ 21h · Moderate Jeff Shaara has enthralled readers with his New York Times bestselling novels set during the Civil War and the American Revolution. Now the acclaimed author turns to World War I, bringing to life the sweeping, emotional story of the war that devastated a generation and established America as a world power.Spring 1916: the horror of a stalemate on Europe's western front. France and Great Britain… Shares: World War I, War stories, Historical Fiction

Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward · 2017 · ★ 4.0 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Moderate A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through… Shares: African American, African Americans

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