Touched with Fire : Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles That Made Them (export e.)

An extraordinary portrait of five soldiers whose careers would lead them from the battlefield to the White House Touched with Fire is a vivid and readable study of five American presidents - Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, James A Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley - at a time when their lives were being lived at the highest pitch.

Drawing on diaries, letters and other first-hand accounts, Perry recreates the battles that brought them fame, and extols the courage that made them extraordinary leaders. "In our youth our hearts were touched with fire." So said Oliver Wendell Holmes, the future Supreme Court Justice, about his fellow Civil War veterans.

The 1860s were a time much like the 1940s, when a generation of idealistic young Americans answered their country's call, and many made the supreme sacrifice to create freedom and liberty for all.

Among the two million "boys in blue" were five soldiers whose wartime heroics would take them into national politics-a ride that would lead, in time, to the White House.