Product Description
In this compulsively readable mystery, the hero is the historical figure Ambrose Bierce, William Randolph Hearst's star reporter and San Francisco's most celebrated writer at the turn of the twentieth century. Bierce is asked to investigate the disappearance of a Hawaiian princess attached to the entourage of King Kalakaua, who is slowly dying in the Palace Hotel's Royal Suite. As Bierce and his prot&eacuteg&eacute, Tom Redmond, search for the missing princess, San Francisco plays host to a throng of Hawaiian royal courtiers and counselors embroiled in a swirl of political intrigue surrounding the successor to the throne.

Intelligent, gripping, and often very funny, this wonderfully tangled tale of murder and mystery is sure to satisfy.

"Oakley Hall has one of the finest prose styles around: tough, agile, but tinged with a sepia hint of gentlemanly elegance. It's a tool perfectly suited to bringing to life the San Francisco of the 1890s, at once gilded and rough hewn, brawling and refined." (Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Second Bierce mystery not up to the quality of the first
I admire Ambrose Bierce's work above all other 19th century writers, with the exception of O. Henry. I enjoy visiting San Francisco. So when I saw that Oakley Hall had written a sequel to Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first book.

Bierce was a short story writer and biting satirist who wrote newspaper columns and generally made a public nuisance of himself in the latter half of the 19th century. A Civil War veteran, his writings on the war anticipate much of the disillusionment and despair that characterizes later writings by Viet Nam veterans. He also wrote a considerable body of horror and ghost stories that are more modern than you might expect. He disappeared in the Mexican Civil War in 1914, and his fate has never been determined reliably. The movie Old Gringo speculated on this, and others have done so. One theory had it that he'd written The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which anyone who'd read Bierce would know was highly unlikely. He despised novels.

So here we have the second of a series of novels about him. In the first there was motivation for him to get involved in the mystery, but here there isn't. Instead we have a missing Hawaiian princess, a dying Hawaiian king, and Bierce looking for said princess. There's no explanation of why Bierce is doing the looking, and no explanation of why his friend Tom Redmond decides to help. They just do. And there's also no suspense: it becomes obvious that she's gone of her own volition, and a friend tells them she's safe. Half of the book slides by before we finally get to some suspense.

An elderly Hawaiian judge is killed, and his rooms set on fire. Bierce and Redmond three-quarters of the book insisting they aren't interested in who killed him, and then are reluctantly drawn into figuring it out. It's mildly entertaining, but no where near as suspenseful or intricate as the first book.

Redmond, meanwhile, has recently lost his wife to illness, and romances a half-Hawaiian lady of considerable stature (over 6') who apparently likes him, but is determined to marry someone prosperous (Redmond's a mere reporter). Redmond accepts this, and it somehow robs the romance of whatever fire it would otherwise have.

There are scenes in restaurants, bars, houses, and the city jail, and all read believably, and interestingly. Bierce and the other characters are well-drawn, and interesting, and I enjoyed the character and atmosphere of the book. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a plot.

Well written, fun, and interesting mystery
It is near the end of the 19th century and America's destiny seems to compell it to reach further west, to the independent kingdom of Hawaii, already largely dominated by the descendents of white missionaries now turned merchants and sugar barons. The King of Hawaii is in San Francisco, dying without clear indication of the succession. When a Hawaiina princess vanishes, poet and newspaper columnist Ambrose Bierce is called upon to find her. Bierce, in turn, asks for help from his friend Tom Redmond, the novel's narrator.

From the start, it is clear that there is more than a missing person. Bierce and Redmond run into the woman's sufferage movement, spiritualism, and the powerful force of Hawaiian magic. When a Hawaiian judge is found murdered, Redmond finds himself under attack from Hawaiian magic.

Author Oakley Hall has created a delightful view of America at the turn of an earlier century. Bierce, with his cynical, yet somehow optimistic, view of the world, makes an effective sleuth, doomed to be disappointed by those he attempts to save. Negative historical attitudes toward women and persons of color are integrated into the story without apology yet without any sense of approval either.

As Bierce explains near the end of the novel, all of the clues are available to the reader. Even those mystery readers who guess the killer will enjoy Hall's smooth writing, the depth of historical detail, and the insights into an important historical/literary figure in Ambrose Bierce, turn of the 19th century America, and the end of the history of Hawaii as an independent country.

A well written and completely enjoyable novel.

Hawaiian royalty, the Gay Nineties, and period atmosphere.
You can almost smell the literary mothballs as this very old-fashioned mystery, set in Gay Nineties San Francisco, unfolds and develops.Adhering faithfully to the tone and atmosphere of the time, and using much of the vocabulary and style of the period,Oakley Hall fills his pages with historical detail as he fleshes out a story of the death of King Kalakaua of Hawaii, including the rivalry for his throne, the influence of the sugar barons, and the pressure of the U.S. government for a lease on Pearl Harbor as a Pacific port. Despite the complex subject matter, Hall's style is surprisingly economical and restrained, and he advances the action quickly, presenting Ambrose Bierce, a real 19th century journalist and writer, as his clever, Holmes-like detective, with the narrator, Tom Redmond, as his much more sympathetic, Watsonian sidekick.

Old Hawaiian customs, sensitive issues of race and color, and America's imperialism all directly affect this plot, and Hall takes great care to depict these issues accurately.Unfortunately, the book gets bogged down in its own minutiae.Well over two dozen characters play roles here, some with similar names, and the reader, not knowing who may eventually become important in all the plots and subplots, must keep track of them all in order to understand the action.Additionally, the main plots regarding succession to the Hawaiian throne involve complex genealogies and political motivation, and there are innumerable subplots and digressions.These include the disappearance of a princess, mysterious and unavenged deaths from the past, blackmail and extortion, Haunani Brown's various love affairs, her search for information on her parentage, the women's suffrage movement, spiritualism and voodoo, white slavery, the introduction of leprosy and other diseases to the islands, and even a gay love connection in San Francisco, certainly enough to keep any reader fully occupied.

Still, if you are fascinated by Gay Nineties San Francisco and by Hawaiian history, this unusual mystery with its careful rendering of the atmosphere of the period should provide you with hours of pleasure.It is not quick or easy reading, but it is intriguing.Mary Whipple

Refreshingly unique mystery
In 1891 at San Francisco's posh Palace Hotel, Hawaiian King Kalakau lies dying in a suite.Apparently, much of the island elite, hanger-ons, and creditors have arrived not so much out of respect, but to gain an edge after His Highness dies.Most of the entourage and several local Americans like the Examiner's Ambrose Bierce debate whether the Unites States should annex Hawaii.

However, the beloved Princess Leileiha has vanished, leaving the royal party in disarray.Sugar king Silas Underwood asks Bierce to find the missing Princess.Chronicle reporter Tom Redmond assists Bierce on his investigation.However, several individuals who would prefer Leileiha to not reappear including Redmond's amazonian half-Hawaiian girl friend Hounani Brown.Plus several other cases slow down the inquiries and the half-Hawaiian girl Redmond has begun to romance is also affected.

The sequel to the highly regarded AMBROSE BIERCE AND THE QUEEN OF SPADES is an engaging historical mystery that is the Americanization of Holmes and Watson.The story line provides insight into the political and social climate of Hawaii and San Francisco during the early part of the Gay Nineties before the American annexation.The prime story line is exciting, but subplots involving unrelated scenarios to the missing princess theme slow down the novel even as it provides greater understanding of the era.Oakley Hall has written a pleasant tale that will satisfy sub-genre fans, especially those that prefer the historical setting to the mystery setting.

Harriet Klausner ... Read more

Product Description
This Kindle file includes 13 books: Black Beetles in Amber (poetry); Can Such Things Be? (collection of stories); Cobwebs from an Empty Skull, written under the pen name of Don Grile (collection of short fables); A Cynic Looks at Life (essay); The Devil's Dictionary;
Fantastic Fables (collection of short fables); The Fiend's Delight, written under the pen name of Don Grile, (collection of short stories); An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (short story); The Parenticide Club (collection of short stories); Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories (collection of short stories); Shadow on the Dial (collection of essays); Shapes of Clay (poetry); A Son of the Gods and a Horseman in the Sky (two short stories); Write It Right: a Little Blacklist of Literary Faults (essay); and volumes 1, 2, and 8 of his Collected Works.According to Wikipedia: "Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – 1914?) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and his satirical dictionary, The Devil's Dictionary.The sardonic view of human nature that informed his work – along with his vehemence as a critic – earned him the nickname, "Bitter Bierce."... In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain a firsthand perspective on that country's ongoing revolution. While traveling with rebel troops, the elderly writer disappeared without a trace."

Responding to customer feedback, I improved the formatting of this file on 7/3/2009.If you bought a copy before then, you should be able to download the new version at no additional cost. Feedback always welcome. seltzer@samizdat.com ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sometimes a Great Writer
There are times when we read the minor works of a major writer, not because the minor stuff is worth reading, but because we want to get a better understanding of what went into the important works.This collection gives us a chance to encounter Ambrose Bierce at his best and at his worst.

Bierce was a successful enough writer in his time, but not highly respected by others.Mark Twain and Stephen Crane didn't think much of him, and some of his stories were self published.His most important literary work, The Hangman's Daughter, isn't in this collection, and a lot of the stories that are included simply show why he was known as Bitter Bierce, a writer of anger without insight.

But to make up for Bierce' deficiencies, there are the Civil War stories, short stories that express the hell of one of history's bloodiest wars. A few times, Bierce was a giant who cut through the claims of honor and nobility.His stories of soldiers and civilians deserve to be required reading today.

This collection offers the very best of Bierce, which admittedly isn't very much, and a lot of his mundane and mediocre writing that offers the opportunity to appraise the larger body of his work, all at a very affordable price.The quality of the collection and table of contents make it easy to maneuver. The percentage of thus collection that's really first rate may be small, but the rest serves as background to help understand a strange man who was at once a bitter hack and one of the most brilliant writers of his period.

Too Ignored a Writer
It's a pity that Ambrose Bierce isn't better represented in high school and college reading lists.He is a skilled writer of a first-rate and unique mind who deserves better.His "Devil's Dictionary" is the most enjoyable mock dictionary you'll find -- often imitated and never matched.His short stories are right up there with the best.One of them, I'm too lazy to look it up, was taken without attribution for the Twilight Zone -- the seldom-aired episode in which a man escapes from the noose and experiences a lot . . . in the split second of his falling to his death by his hanging.Rod Serling liked the story so much that he put his own name on it!

The Kindle edition is well-formatted for the Kindle and it's active table of contents will let you navigate the book with ease.

It's an incredible bargain and a collection that you'll enjoy. ... Read more

Product Description
A lively and compelling portrait of one of the most acerbic and distinctive voices in American literature, Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company is a clear-eyed but sympathetic account of a complex individual at odds with his country, his family, his times, and himself.

The only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, Bierce discovered in the conflict a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals--be they romantic, religious, or political. His groundbreaking short stories of the war, including his most famous work, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," have had a lasting influence on every subsequent American author dealing with war.And the heartless, hilarious aphorisms in his caustic lexicon The Devil's Dictionary have entered, often uncredited, our national consciousness.

In this insightful, critically acclaimed biography, the first comprehensive study in almost fifty years, Roy Morris, Jr., accounts for both the influential art that Ambrose Bierce made from a harsh and unforgiving vision--and the high price he had to pay for it in loneliness, rancor, and spiritual isolation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

The Icicle Man
Ambrose Bierce never had trouble giving vent to what was on his mind. More than any other American writer, even the more celebrated Mark Twain, Bierce dared to gore the sacred cows of his day. This came with a price, as Roy Morris, Jr. notes in his 1995 biography.

Family ties were cut. Friendships were cast aside. Enemies were cultivated with a passion. Bierce may not have believed the pen was mightier than the sword, but he strove mightily to make up the difference.

"One of the rarest amusements in life is to go about with an icicle suspended by a string, letting it down the necks of the unwary," Bierce wrote during his days as San Francisco's most feared columnist. "The sudden shrug, the quick, frightened shudder, the yelp of apprehension are sources of pure, because diabolical, delight."

Bierce's fame rests today on three things: The black humor of his "Devil's Dictionary", the mind-bending short story "Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge", and the way he vanished from the face of the earth. Morris presents a more rounded figure than that, of harsh invective and clean narrative whose own experience from seeing some of the worst action of the American Civil War hardened him into a thing of steel, direct in purpose though rather cold to the touch.

Morris, a writer on Civil War subjects, gives Bierce's role in the war much of his focus. While noble ideals may still frame our understanding of the conflict, for Bierce it became a kind of senseless slaughter confirming an already dark world view. He served the Union with distinction, twice braving bullets to rescue wounded comrades, but in the end would describe patriotism as "fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone and irrational as a headless hen."

For Bierce, life was a pointless parade of pain and loneliness, its amusement hollow in the end. "The world was never Bierce's oyster, however much its irritations produced, on occasion at least, some fugitive pearls of acrid wisdom," Morris writes.

The best part of the biography depicts Bierce in his element as a West Coast columnist castigating both the wealthy and the weak. Religion drew especial scorn from the inveterate atheist. "After explaining the New Life for a series of years, it is proper that he should go and learn what it is like," he wrote of one minister's passing. "We beg for all his co-workers a similar privilege."

Morris sometimes strives to psychoanalyze Bierce through his short stories, the most successful of which used either the Civil War or the supernatural as a theme. This gets thin after a while. He argues for any parental figure in Bierce's fiction to be read as substitutes for Bierce's own father and mother. He tries to pull clues from the stories of the complicated, often dark feelings Bierce had for women, though this doesn't quite square with the fact Bierce suffered from no lack of female companionship in his life.

Morris's speculations seem on firmer, more fruitful ground when analyzing Bierce's final act, his disappearance, supposedly in Mexico where he went to see Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution. Here Morris examines the record and offers a theory that contradicts the established story but squares with Bierce's character as we come to know him here.

Does Bierce's greatness lie more with his writing (he produced many short stories but never a novel) or his singular character? Morris puts forward a strong literary defense for Bierce, but in the end its his personality that stays with you longest. Cold, clear-eyed, dyspeptic, and completely reconciled to life at its worst, Bierce offers a case study that the pain that comes with telling hard truths can afflict the teller worse than the one being told.

A Balanced View
It's difficult for a biographer to be objective about a subject.They carry their own personality and experience into each work.This bio comes pretty close to an even-handed look at a very controversial figure.

If you are looking for one book on Bierce, buy this one.It's the best of the lot to date.

Detailed and informative, but.....
Morris' biography of Bierce is thorough and has a lot of insight, but one thing that irritates is the implication that Bierce is not a "major" writer. There's even a a blurb on the book jacket from some critic at the Washington Post referring to him as a "lesser" writer.

Are you kidding? Bierce wrote at least four or five of the greatest short stories in American literature. He pioneered the idea of showing readers that they weren't paying attention; he explored near-death experience masterfully in "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"--as well as delivering a scathing criticism of war; he wrote the most riveting Civil War story of all time, "Chickamauga," and he inspired dozens of modern and postmodern writers--Hemingway through Joseph Heller.

Yes, Bierce's work was inconsistent. But so was Twain's, Crane's, and the work of dozens of other "major" writers.

The best Bierce criticism is Richard O'Connor's _Ambrose Bierce: A Biography_, published in 1967. If you're interested in Bierce, read that one first.

Worth reading for the speculation alone -- maybe Bierce didn't die in Mexico
Conventional wisdom and history books have it that Ambrose Bierce died in Mexico during the Revolution. But Morris, in this in-depth biography, offers a fairly plausible alternative. (Sorry, not giving the store away as part of the review; you're going to have to get your hands on this book.)

Much of the rest of the speculation in which Morris engages is psychological. He first analyses Bierce's childhood and parents, then takes note of his Civil War head wound, and wonders just how much the two of these things combined to contribute to the Ambrose Bierce we know today.

That said, while not denying either childhood or adult causes of personality development -- or personality change -- I give more credence to genetic causes, i.e., the ideas of evolutionary psychology, properly applied.

I find it likely that Bierce was pretty much born with tendencies toward the character he later exhibited. His upbringing and his war wound may have intensified it, but I think he came by much of his cynicism naturally. Life events probably added the dollop of churlishness to it.

I teeter on a rating and end up at 4 stars. If I were to fine tune, it would probably be about 3 2/3 stars. The psycho-speculation is interesting, but in addition to being incomplete, if not somewhat wrong, too much of a focus on it means less focus on historical biography or on literary analysis.

Bierce a lesser figure?
I am perfectly aware that to say that Ambrose Bierce was the most original, provocative and fascinating of all American writers (not to say the most brilliant of all) is like preaching in the desert. It is probably going to cost me a lot of negative feedback to say what I'm going to say, so I won't extend myself more than what it is absolutely necessary in order to speak my mind.

The main reason for me to write this review is that this laughable biography by Roy Morris is so flagrantly detrimental on Bierce's accomplishments that I personally didn't want to lose the opportunity to advise you against reading such a lot of blather. The author even puts an awful novel like "The Red Badge of Courage" above Bierce's war stories (hilarious, isn't it?). After that, what else can be said about this biographer's ineptitude? Let's draw a veil over it and forget it.

Anyone wishing to know something about the skilled artistry and posterior influence of the Ohio writer would be better looking for another book written by someone who had actually grasped Bierce's significance. But the best thing to do is reading Bierce's stories on your own and make up your mind about them instead of losing your time with the prejudices and lack of perspective of others.

After reading some passages of this book, I reassure myself in my opinion that literary critics are, well, funny...

In a world where mediocrity runs rampant and where authors like Mark Twain and the hideous Henry James have always been praised, it is difficult that really worthy authors like Bierce can find the recognition they deserve. But, perhaps, it is better that way, I don't know.

What I know for sure (because I've seen it) is that, when a genius is born, all nefarious souls tend to ally themselves against it. Anyway, how could a writer like Bierce be enjoyed by a majority? It's impossible.

Well, I don't think this review is gonna get anywhere, so I'd better stop here. Thank you for your reading.

Note- sorry for any bad grammar on my part. I don't usually write in the language of the "Empire".
... Read more

Product Description
Sixteen dark and vivid selections by great satirist and short-story writer. "A Horseman in the Sky," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "Chickamauga," "A Son of the Gods," "What I Saw of Shiloh," "Four Days in Dixie" and 10 more. Masterly tales offer excellent examples of Bierce’s dark pessimism and storytelling power. Note.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Excellent
Today, if known at all, Ambrose Bierce is recalled as that guy who wrote that funny book The Devil's Dictionary. He was seen, and still is seen, as a sort of poor man's Mark Twain. This is quite unfair, as he was a marvelous writer in his own right, although not with the depth nor wit that Twain possessed. Part of the problem is that his personal life, strong opinions, and bitter biases (he loathed Oscar Wilde, for example), have led to his marginalization. Yet, Bierce was a master of the short story form- every bit the equal or superior of more lauded contemporaries like Guy de Maupassant, or O. Henry. Mostly, it is in the horror or thriller vein that his tales fall, but his best work, in my opinion, can be found in his marvelous tales of the Civil War....These are simply riveting tales, far more modern than his contemporaries work, and most of this is due to Bierce's journalistic background (he worked for William Randolph Hearst at the San Francisco Examiner). About the only thing that keeps the tales from a full claim on modernity is Bierce's penchant for twist endings, rather than the more naturalistic zero endings that Anton Chekhov pioneered, and others ran with. Still, the description that Bierce paints- of lives, deaths, moments, and battles, are rich, horrific, and vivid. His characters are usually merely servants to the overall narrative- another `throwback' trait of pre-modern fiction, but ask yourself- is there a character in all of Donald Barthelme's or Rick Moody's writing that is not cardboard? Bierce was simply not attempting great character portraits, in general, so to hold him up to that standard is not tenable. By every other measure, though, his tales could have been penned by a modern writer covering Vietnam or the two Iraq wars....The stories are first rate, and mustr reading fore anyone enamored of short stories, or those just interested in American history, or the Civil War. As for the man himself? In 1913, after a series of personal setbacks- deaths of sons and a divorce, he set out for Mexico to cover Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution. His last written words were: `Goodbye, if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it a pretty good way to depart this life.It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs.To be a Gringo in Mexico- ah, that is euthanasia!' It is fitting that such an enigmatic man and writer would leave such an epitaph, but that is not his legacy. These great stories are- read, learn, but most of all enjoy.

Hardships of the civil war soldier
This book was written in an old type of writing/format which could be difficult to follow.The content was mainly concerned with the hardships the soldiers faced, not on the movements and plans for the battles.Good descriptions, good stories.

Very good short stories about war
Ambrose Bierce reminds you of O'Henry, Mark Twain and Bret Harte:
he has a unique sense of honor and irony. I feel I should have read him when I read The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the Civil War. These stories have the cast of eye witness accounts of the crudity
of a civil war when brother fights brother and father fights son
over ideals like rights and freedoms.
I liked these stories very much
and I think those going to war should
read them today.

Exceptionally Good Collection - Great Reading
Ambrose Bierce was not a likeable individual; he was often acerbic, sarcastic, and even mean spirited. Nonetheless, he created remarkably good short stories. This collection shares a common theme, the Civil War, but the individual stories belong to many different genre and will appeal to a wide audience. There is no need to be a Civil War enthusiast to enjoy this collection.

Ambrose Bierce fought in several bloody battles in the west in the Civil War including Shiloh and Chickamauga, is credited with rescuing wounded comrades under fire, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. The first story - What I Saw of Shiloh - is a 17-page fascinating, occasionally critical, first person account of his participation.

The next story - Four Days in Dixie - is another first person account, but I simply do not know whether Bierce was being truthful or not. Whether the truth, an exaggeration, or perhaps a fabrication, Four Days in Dixie is entertaining reading.

The remaining fourteen stories are clearly fiction and are characterized by unusual perspectives and unexpected endings.The tales of Ambrose Bierce not only make exciting, entertaining reading, but they are often thought provoking.The endings often come as a surprise, and leave the reader pondering the unusual outcome.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a good example. This story spans several genre, is not easily classified, and has an unexpected ending.This remarkable story has been recreated as a screen play and may be familiar to many readers from black and white television reruns of the Twilight Zone series.

This collection is uniformly good and warrants more than one reading. This Dover Thrift Edition is definitely a bargain.

A Soldier's View of the Civil War
Ambrose Bierce served during the American Civil War, serving as a cartographer and officer for the Union.In these 16 compelling tales, Bierce conveys the sights and sounds from a soldier's perspective of the war, ranging from being in the heart of battlein "What I Saw of Shiloh" to a young boy lost in the woods in "Chickamauga" to tales of the supernatural and of odd events, including "One of the Missing" -- a chilling tale of a soldier in an abandoned house -- and his famous "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge."Bierce's no-nonsense style puts the reader in the heart of the action, making the reader take an active part in the events.A great collection of stories from one of America's best writers. ... Read more

Product Description

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews (2)

Great collection
Works of Ambrose Bierce. Includes An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Devil's Dictionary, Fantastic Fables, Cobwebs from Empty Skull and more. FREE ... version. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

Truly an impressive collection of this wonderful author. Readers will quickly see why Ambrose Bierce was one of Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut's favorite authors. Anyone looking for some classic reading material that only a handful of true American Literature fans know about, you've come to the right place in Ambrose Bierce's writings.

fascinating
Works of Ambrose Bierce. (800+ Works) Including An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and The Devil's Dictionary, Fantastic Fables, Cobwebs from an Empty Skull ... biography and stories in the trial version.

This is an excellent ebook. Bierce is one of the greatest American writers of horror stories. Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description
This volume includes: ASHES OF THE BEACON; THE LAND BEYOND THE BLOW ( THITHER,
SONS OF THE FAIR STAR, AN INTERVIEW WITH GNARMAG-ZOTE,THE TAMTONIANS, MAROONED ON UG,THE DOG IN GANGEWAG, A CONFLAGRATION IN GHARGAROO, AN EXECUTION IN BATRUGIA, THE JUMJUM OF GOKEETLE-GUK,THE KINGDOM OF TORTIRRA, andHITHER), FOR THE AHKOOND, JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR, and BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY ( ON A MOUNTAIN,WHAT I SAW OF SHILOH,A LITTLE OF CHICKAMAUCA, THE CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL, FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE,WHAT OCCURRED AT FRANKLIN,'WAY DOWN IN ALABAM', WORKING FOR AN EMPRESS,ACROSS THE PLAINS,THE MIRAGE,A SOLE SURVIVOR) ... Read more

Product Description
This powerful collection contains the very best of this world-renowned author's writings.All of the short stories and factual accounts of the Civil War presented here form a searing, unflinching portrait of this terrible war.For fiction and non-fiction fans and history buffs alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

You don't want to miss this one
This book is divided into two sections.The first, "War Memoirs," comprises about one quarter of the book; the second, "War Stories," the remaining three fourths.I was really taken with Bierce's memoirs, so much so that I was sorry to see that section end so soon.I shouldn't have been, for, if anything, Bierce's war stories were even more interesting.

Much to my surprise, Ambrose Bierce turned out to be not only a great author but also a great story teller, and, having fought through the Civil War (rising from the status of a 19 year old volunteer private with a three month enlistment to become a Captain in topography by war's end) he developed an innate understanding of what it is like to fight a fratricidal war from the very bottom up.His powers of observation and memory are unexcelled, most likely honed by his duties as a topographical engineer on the field of battle.These give life to his memoirs and when coupled with his vivid imagination and writing skills produce some truly remarkable tales.

As I began reading those tales, it occurred to me that it was almost as if I was reading the scripts from Rod Serling's TV series "The Twilight Zone," for every story was brilliantly conceived and ended with a twist -- some unusual and totally unexpected event.Then I ran into a story entitled "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge."Gee whiz!I WAS reading stories very much like "The Twilight Zone."In fact, that story was presented on "The Twilight Zone" and, to my mind, is the most memorable story that show ever produced.I couldn't help but wonder how many others of Bierce's stories Serling had adapted for his program, for those two men were obviously kindred spirits and had similar outlooks on life.(Serling got his while serving as a 5' 4" paratrooper fighting in the South Pacific during World War II.)

I have read a lot of military biographies, and some stories, by and about numerous military figures -- Generals Sherman and Patton, Chesty Puller, Sergeant York, Audie Murphy, Manfred von Richthofen, Jimmy Doolittle, Pappy Boyington, etc. -- as well as the writings of Ernie Pyle and others, but I have never read anything like the writings of Ambrose Bierce.His memoirs and stories put you right in the middle of the action during the great battles and smaller skirmishes of the Civil War as seen and felt by the men actually doing the fighting.So, if you want to understand military terminology; learn something about military operations and history; experience the fog of war; and read some really great stories, you don't want to miss this one.But keep your dictionary handy.

Descriptive Civil War Stories
Ambrose Bierce's Civil War has everything you could ask for from a non-fiction, storytelling book about the Civil War.It is filled will all sorts of war memoirs and stories from his experiences and experiences of others throughout the Civil War.There are gruesome explanations of brains oozing out of a head in the war memoir "What I Saw at Shiloh," dead bodies covering the ground and endless thunderstorms.Alongside these dismal recounts of the Civil War, there are also stories of loyalty, family and courage.This contrast of the positives and negatives in the war makes this book very interesting.One page it will be raining and there are dead bodies on the ground.The next page is filled with sunlight and untouched and uninhabited forests.My favorite story would have to be "What I Saw at Shiloh," but there are several that are very good.All of them are extremely descriptive, too.No details are left out.Anyone who stays tuned to all of Grandpas old war stories would definitely like this book.It is filled with enough non-fictional material to keep you on edge for quite some time.

Civil War
Ambrose Bierce's Civil War is a bit of a mixed bag; it contains a handful of non-fiction articles and a number of non-fiction `War Stories.'All deal with topics common to war, some specific to the American Civil War - there are tales of courage, obedience, the foolishness of generals and the effect of civil war on families.And, as William McCann puts it in his introduction to this volume, "in these creations his lifelong obsession with death and the macabre calamity were fruitfully and not incongruously employed."
That `obsession' becomes a little overbearing at times.In an otherwise pedestrian recollection in "What I Saw of Shiloh" the reader stumbles across this arresting image of a wounded Federal sergeant: "A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings.I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain.One of my men whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him.Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and too many were looking."You either laugh, cringe, or close the book for good when you come across passages like this.In similarly expressive terms, in both fiction and non-fiction, Bierce describes the effects of wild swine on dead and wounded soldiers.If you're squeamish consider yourself warned.
My objection to Bierce's `obsession' is that it tends to unbalance his work.The images are so strong they tend to drown out the larger themes.In a month I will hard pressed to remember much of anything he had to say about Shiloh, but I'll long remember the Federal soldier with the drooling brain.
Save for a sprinkling of startling images, the non-fiction pieces are undistinguished.You can go to a hundred other sources for more informative, and entertaining, reminiscences.
The fiction is another matter.Bierce's justifiably famous "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is included.In the compressed space of the short story, and some of these stories are very short indeed, Bierce treats difficult themes with surprising deftness and sensitivity.In "Parker Anderson, Philosopher" a Rebel spy is interrogated by a slower witted Federal general.The spy treats the threat of his imminent death, he is to be executed at dawn, in a cavalier manner.With great economy Bierce takes this tale of the meaning of courage and turns it upside down.
My favorite piece in the book was "One Kind of Officer," a tale which literally and figuratively treats the fog of war.A weaker entry is "One of the Missing," a story of a sharpshooter in General Sherman's army who is pinned beneath a collapsed building with his loaded and cocked hair-trigger rifle pointed at his forehead.Bierce sometimes forces things and his work suffers for it.In another story it's more a disappointment than anything to discover that the cannoneer was bombarding his own home all the time, slaughtering his family because of orders from a twisted commander and a deeply ingrained sense of obedience.Too convenient, too contrived.It's an author going for the "Aha" moment, a cheap and manipulative trick that is beneath Bierce's talent.
Civil War buffs should enjoy Ambrose Bierce's Civil War immensely.There are plenty of gems, and even the common stones have their moments.

The Graphic Violence of War With Twists At The End
I read this book when I was doing research about one of the taboos of warfare.That was the discussion of the Coup De Grace of a fellow soldier.During my research I found that virtually no one had ever written (either in books or screenplays) about this with the exception of Bierce.It is an interesting paradox to ask yourself whether you would have the capability to put a friend out of their misery rather than let them suffer if you knew that help was not available.In fact, Bierce's short story is entitled, "The Coup De Grace".You'll find it and 27 others in this volume.The most famous is, "An Occurrence At Owl Creek".A story that was made into a short film and was the Short Subject winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and earned an Academy Award in 1964 as best Foreign Film.

All of the stories you find in this book are told with the tight, economical style of Bierce and many have an O'Henry or Sterling twist at the end.They are told in the frank and bloody prose that Bierce witnessed (and physically experienced) first hand as an Officer in the Union Army.As one reads these stories you can clearly see the basis for Bierce's caustic and acidulous writing style that stayed with him throughout his life including as a columnist for William Randolph Hearst at the San Francisco Examiner and until he walked away into the Mexican desert in 1913.His demise is the source of great conjecture (as he would have wanted it) but that is for other books about the man and his writing.

The best kept secret in American literature:
Ambrose Bierce, a soldier in the Civil War, focused on the war in many of his short stories, which are truly phenominal.With the surreal and supernatural sensibilities of Poe and ironic endings worthy of O. Henry, Bierce deserves a place among our most treasured authors. ... Read more

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Classic short essay. According to Wikipedia:" Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and satirist, today best known for his An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Bierce's lucid, unsentimental style has kept him popular when many of his contemporaries have been consigned to oblivion. His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, "Bitter Bierce". Such was his reputation that it was said his judgment on any piece of prose or poetry could make or break a writer's career. " ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amusing and old fashioned
This book is a long alphabtical list of literary faults by Ambrose Bierce (an American writer). It is mostly his own 'pet peeves' but this makes it amusing to read as he lists the correct way to say it, and often sounds very angry about the wrong way!! So I would recommend this book if you want to read about the formal 'correct' way to say anything, eg: 'I assumed a disguise' instead of 'I adopted a disguise'. He says you 'only adopt a child, not a disguise' :) ... Read more

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The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, is a satirical book published in 1911. It offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak. ... Read more

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The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, is a satirical book published in 1911. It offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Insulting poems, cruel epigrams, parodies of bad fiction, character assassinations by America’s bitterest, wittiest humorist. Selection includes lampoon of Oscar Wilde; ghoulish horror stories; sarcasm that caused duels, more. Edited by George Barkin.
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From the back cover
"Bitter Bierce" earned his livelihood as the country's most provocative weekly columnist in the unrestrained days of the early Hearst empire. His forte was the demolishing attack in which verbal brilliance, remorseless wit, and plenty of spleen and irascibility were uniquely blended - wih a dash of bizarre fantasy added just for spice. His objects were people and things he hated: personal enemies, journalistic enemies, labor, religion, capital, corruption, women, etc. A genius at enraging people, Bierce was never good-natured like Shaw or Chesterton, but used his great gifts against hundreds of individuals, many of whom are remembered only through theimmortality their attacker unwittingly gave them.

Most of his dazzling epigrams, cutting verses and prose pieces have long been completely unavailable, even though they are among Bierce's best work. Bierce was cordially disliked by his generation and he found it difficult to get book publication. As a reslt, much of his finest material appeared in ephemeral media.

This volume contains the best of the mordant, sarcastic humor from Bierce's "Shapes of Clay," "Black beetles in Amber," and the privately-printed revisions of his journalistic work. Included are the great lampoon of Oscar Wilde in San Francisco; the demolition of Arthur MacEwen; the verbal massacre of dozens of minor poets and bad novelists; parodies ofwretched novels; ghoulishly humorous stories; epigrams; cynical attacks upon immorality, cant and hypocricy; the sarcasms that led victims to his office with horsewhips in hand; and much more.

If you like your humor restrained and understated, you may not like this book, though you will certainly admire Bierce's skill. On the other hand, if you enjoyed "the Devil's Dictionary" and can appreciate reckless, strong wit that spares nothing and no one, dished up with boundless gusto and savage imagination, then this will be one of your very favorite books. ... Read more

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A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack feel to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners -- two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.


Download An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Now!
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Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-1914) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and satirist, today best known for his The Devil’s Dictionary (1911). He wrote some of his books under the pseudonyms Dod Grile and J. Milton Sloluck. Bierce’s lucid, unsentimental style has kept him popular when many of his contemporaries have been consigned to oblivion. His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, “Bitter Bierce. ” Such was his reputation that it was said his judgment on any piece of prose or poetry could make or break a writer’s career. His short stories are considered among the best of the 19th century, providing a popular following based on his roots. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Killed at Resaca, and Chickamauga. His works include: The Fiend’s Delight (1873), Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874), Black Beetles in Amber (1892), Fantastic Fables (1899), Shapes of Clay (1903), A Son of the Gods, and A Horseman in the Sky (1907), Write It Right (1909) and A Cynic Looks at Life (1912). ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Biography ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Alone among important American writers, Ambrose Bierce fought for four years in the Civil War.The writings he produced about that conflict comprise a body of work unique in our nation's literature. This volume gathers for the first time virtually everything Bierce wrote about the war, from letters composed on the field of battle to maps he drew as a topographical engineer, from his masterful short stories to his final bittersweet ruminations before he disappeared into Mexico in 1914.The collection is organized chronologically, following Bierce's participation in a wide range of battles, from the early skirmishes in the West Virginia mountains to the bloodbaths at Shiloh and Chickamauga and his near fatal wounding at Kennesaw Mountain. His overlapping accounts of these events provide a clear and compelling record of the sights and sounds of the battlefield, the psycho-logical traumas the war induced in its soldiers, and the memories that would haunt survivors for the rest of their lives. In prose that anticipates the work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien, Bierce's writings unflinchingly tell the truth about the war. Writing in the 1880s and 1890s, at a time when both the North and South were erecting monuments to the heroes and glories of the war, Bierce insisted that his readers confront what really happened. Rather than celebrate causes and comrades, Bierce's fiction and memoirs describe the impossibly brutal realities of the Civil War battlefield.The volume includes a biographical introduction and comprehensive notes on all the writings and is suitable for classroom adoption and general readers alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Better late than never
I found this book through Drew Gilpin Faust's book, and I am grateful to her for citing it. (Her book-The Republic of Suffering-is also highly recommended, but hardly needs recommending, since it already sold well). Bierce was well known in his time, but he is also timely now, when we once again glorify war and dying for dubious causes, to which we give grandiloquent names. Bierce calls things by their real names and earned the right. He fought almost four years in the Civil War, surviving innumerable battles before a head wound ended his military service. Then his real work began. ... Read more

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From Thomas Pynchon to Richard Ford, Amy Tan to Diane Johnson, the list of devotees of the Ambrose Bierce mystery series continues to grow as the larger-than-life hero tracks down California’s most malevolent criminal minds. In this rough-and-tumble romp through gritty Old San Francisco, Ambrose Bierce and his faithful associate Tom Redmond are on the trail of a celebrity sniper. Amid seduction, revenge, wing shots, ambuscades, knife throwers, free-love colonies, a friendly opium parlor, and a letter from Queen Victoria, Ambrose Bierce and Tom Redmond must turn up the true killer. ... Read more