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Among the big events in history that we study are wars such as World War II or the American Revolution. After we absorb the overall picture, it really helps our understanding to look at the human-level details, the fascinating stories that lie behind the great sweep of events. This is where history comes alive for me. Often this is the domain of historical fiction, where we can learn historical details and get a feel for what the war was like for people like ourselves. C. Brian Kelly, a journalist, historian, and editor, shows us a different way to learn about these local stories by collecting, from many different sources, true stories about little parts of large parts of history. In particular, his two books Best Little Stories of the Civil War and Best Little Ironies, Oddities, and Mysteries of the Civil War do this for the American Civil War. These are fascinating and true “little stories” that are probably not known to most readers. Kelly re-tells them well in an interesting fashion, little but not unimportant things that don’t fit into a one book overview of an historical period. The American Civil War, often called the first modern war, was a large piece of history, so it was even too much for the “little stories” to be covered in a single volume. Kelly wrote two books, each with a little different flavor from each other - you can tell by the titles. He often gives some background material to help the reader understand the setting of the story. Our ancestors were real people, with real feelings and real thoughts – these little stories help reinforce that assertion. Sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, sometimes dramatic, these are good high school-level books to give a human background to the American Civil War. You don’t need to read them from cover to cover but you can select stories of interest – there is an excellent index and the stories are arranged in chronological order.