Share This Article

Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, & Memoir

edited by S.T. Joshi; Library of America

Ambrose Bierce served in the Union Army for most of the war, fighting in several important Western Theater battles with the 9th Indiana Infantry and as an officer on Brig. Gen. William Hazen’s staff. Although better known for his tales of suspense and curmudgeonly journalism, Bierce relied on the details of his wartime experiences to pen an exceptional series of stories, “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.”

His most expressive battle pieces, organized as “Bits of Autobiography,” are brilliant first-person accounts of the confusion and horror soldiers experienced under fire. Editor S.T. Joshi, a renowned Bierce scholar, provides useful notes for all the selections included here.

The Devil’s Dictionary, Bierce’s longest work, defines history as “an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.” Nevertheless, Bierce was proud of his own military service. The stories he wrote before he disappeared while chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1913 remain underappreciated by today’s reading public. But they are unsurpassed in American literature.

 

Originally published in the April 2012 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.