To bring the tale to life, the book focuses on little-seen photographs and original artefacts from the period: sketches from soldier's diaries, unusual and rare military and political memorabilia. And it brings us face-to-face with those who lived through the period, presenting scores of excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers, officers and statesmen. Yet the book also captures the full sweep of the war, telling the tale in chronological fashion, as the war evolves from a quiet beginning to become a mammoth struggle that consumed the divided nation. Here are the great generals: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. Here are the great battles, from Bull Run and Antietam to Gettysburg and Shiloh. Here are the latest discoveries and analysis by scholars of the conflict. And here are fascinating, informative graphics that reveal the war in fresh, clarifying detail. Here is a larger-than-life conflict, reported and illuminated in a larger-than-life oversized edition from "TIME".