Meet the Author: Brian Matthew Jordan

Join us for this virtual event LIVE on Facebook, Tuesday, November 10 at 7 p.m. with author Brian Matthew Jordan and a presentation about his book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, followed by a Q&A. For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans—tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions—tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget, and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age. Mining previously untapped archives, Jordan uncovers anguished letters and diaries, essays by amputees, and gruesome medical reports, all deeply revealing of the American psyche. 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 for History. He lives in Willis, Texas.