A Thousand May Fall: Life, Death, and Survival in the Union Army

Brian Matthew Jordan

Mar 2021 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Christopher Douyard

About this audiobook

The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, yet our nation remains fiercely divided over its enduring legacies. In A Thousand May Fall, Pulitzer Prize finalist Brian Matthew Jordan returns us to the war itself. Creating an intimate, absorbing chronicle from the ordinary soldier's perspective, he allows us to see the Civil War anew-and through unexpected eyes. At the heart of Jordan's vital account is the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which was at once representative and exceptional. Its ranks weathered the human ordeal of war in painstakingly routine ways, fighting in two defining battles, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, each time in the thick of the killing. But the men of the 107th were not lauded as heroes. Most of them were ethnic Germans, set apart by language and identity, and their loyalties were regularly questioned by a nativist Northern press. In the course of its service, the 107th Ohio was decimated five times over, and although one of its members earned the Medal of Honor, few others achieved any lasting distinction. Reclaiming these men for posterity, Jordan reveals that even as they endured the horrible extremes of war, the Ohioans contemplated the deeper meanings of the conflict at every turn-from personal questions of citizenship and belonging to the overriding matter of slavery and emancipation.

About the author

Brian Matthew Jordan is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University. His first book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He lives in Willis, Texas.

Christopher Douyard took the backroads to audiobook narration, though he is no stranger to performing. Christopher has nourished a passion for books and storytelling since his youth, when he would devour Tolkien and the Encyclopedia Britannica with equal abandon. He records from his studio in central Connecticut.