Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (Annotated)
Enriched Edition. 26 Stories: includes Chickamauga + An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge + The Mocking-BirdBy Ambrose Bierce
Length10h 1m
About this audiobook
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians gathers Ambrose Bierce's most enduring short fiction, moving between Civil War battlefields and unsettling civilian encounters with death, guilt, fear, and the uncanny. Written in a compressed, ironic, and often pitiless style, these stories reject sentimental heroics in favor of psychological shock and moral ambiguity. Pieces such as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamauga" place Bierce within American realism while also anticipating modernist fragmentation and the literature of trauma. Bierce's authority derives in large measure from experience. As a Union soldier in the American Civil War, he witnessed combat at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and elsewhere, and his fiction bears the imprint of battlefield confusion, sudden violence, and the collapse of comforting ideals. Later known as a journalist, satirist, and author of The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce brought to fiction a caustic intelligence and a distrust of patriotic rhetoric. This volume is recommended to readers interested in war literature, American Gothic fiction, and the evolution of the short story. Its brevity is deceptive: Bierce's tales linger because they expose the mind under extremity and the fragile boundary between courage, delusion, and terror.
This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience.
- A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions.
- The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing.
- A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation.
- A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists.
- A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths.
- Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts.
- Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
Audiobook details
GenreAction and Adventure, General Fiction
Length10 hrs 1 min
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJul 10, 2013
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (Annotated)
20One Officer, One Man
2Introduction
21George Thurston
3Author Biography
22The Mocking-Bird
4Historical Context
23Civilians
5Synopsis (Selection)
24The Man Out of the Nose
Show all chaptersShow less
6Preface to the First Edition
25An Adventure at Brownville
7Soldiers
26The Famous Gilson Bequest
8A Horseman in the Sky
27The Applicant
9An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
28A Watcher by the Dead
10Chickamauga
29The Man and the Snake
11A Son of the Gods
30A Holy Terror
12One of the Missing
31The Suitable Surroundings
13Killed at Resaca
32The Boarded Window
14The Affair at Coulter’s Notch
33A Lady from Redhorse
15The Coup de Grâce
34The Eyes of the Panther
16Parker Adderson, Philosopher
35Analysis
17An Affair of Outposts
36Reflection
18The Story of a Conscience
37Memorable Quotes
19One Kind of Officer
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