Joseph Gibbs

Every family has their hidden crackpot. For 17-year-old Brogan, it was Uncle Frank. In the mixed imagination of family lore, Frank was known as a chronic gambler, self-proclaimed philosopher, prodigious alcoholic, and an innate con artist. Yet, Brogan knew him only for his birthday cards. They arrived every year, not always on his birthday, with the distinct trace of a gasoline smell, accompanied by a $10 check that Brogan was never allowed to cash,...

Hailing from the Keystone State's rugged western counties, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserves was one of the Civil War's most heavily engaged units. Of more than 2,100 regiments raised by the North, it suffered the eighth highest number of battle deaths, earning it the gruesome sobriquet "Bloody Eleventh." Three Years in the "Bloody Eleventh" tells the story of this often-overlooked element of the Army of the Potomac from before the war up through...