About this item
The lead writer of the New York Times's award-winning "Disunion" series introduces William Barker Cushing, the Civil War's most celebrated naval hero. October 1864. The confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle had sunk two federal warships and damaged seven others, taking control of the Roanoke River and threatening the Union blockade. Twenty-one-year-old navy lieutenant William Barker Cushing hatched a daring plan: to attack the fearsome warship with a few dozen men in two small wooden boats. What followed, the close-range torpedoing of the Albemarle and Cushing's harrowing two-day escape downriver from vengeful Rebel posses, is one of the most dramatic individual exploits in American military history. Theodore Roosevelt said that Cushing "comes next to Farragut on the hero roll of American naval history," but most have never heard of him today.
About the Author
JAMIE MALANOWSKI is a writer and editor. A member of the original staff of Spy, where he worked seven years, Jamie has also been an editor at Time, Esquire, and Playboy. The recipient of the 2012 Folio Award for Feature Writing,Jamie has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Washington Monthly, and many other The New York Times, where he was the lead writer for Disunion, the award-winning series about The Civil War. His e-single, The Book of Levon: The Trials and Triumphs of Levon Helm, will be published in April. He is also the author of the novels Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington (Birch Lane, 1992) and The Coup (Doubleday, 2007); author And the War Came (2011), about the months prior to the outbreak of the Civil War; co-author with Kurt Andersen and Lisa Birnbach of the play and book Loose Lips;and co-author, with Martyn Burke, of the HBO movie Pentagon Wars. Jamie lives in Westchester County NY with his family.
