Take my word for it - don't never let nobody make a movie of your life's story...'Forrest Gump is back! The lovable man for all ages captured America's heart in the No.1 bestselling novel Forrest Gump and in the blockbuster film, winner of six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor. Now he returns in the long-awaited sequel to the book hailed by Larry King as 'the funniest novel I have ever read'. A little older, and wiser in his own unique way, he is still running through the kaleidoscopic events of our times - and straight into the age of greed and instant gratification known as the 1980s.Whenever I really get stumped, I go visit Jenny's grave. She tells me she's always rooting for me. The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. has gone bust and Forrest is flat broke, sweeping floors in a New Orleans strip joint when Gump & Co. begins. As always in Forrest's easy-come-easy-go life, a change in the weather is never far off...and when the opportunity to play championship football comes his way once more, Forrest is back in the limelight and in the money. But fate is a fickle lady, and he's soon out on the road selling phony encyclopedias and trying to raise his son, little Forrest, who needs his father more than ever. Forrest's remarkable, touching, and utterly comic odyssey has just in store for him is an explosive attempt at hog farming; his own dubious recipe for adding life to New Coke; an encounter with Ollie North; and a chance yet again to unwittingly twist the nose of history.One of the most phenomenally successful books of our time, Forrest Gump was praised as 'a wacky and funny nuthouse of a book' (George Plimpton) and 'superbly controlled satire' (Florence King, Washington Post Book World); Forrest himself 'should enter the annals of fiction as a great American hero' (Rima Firrone, Ocala Star-Banner). Winston Groom continues to delight us with Gump's hilarious and heartwarming adventures. 'At least,' Forrest would agree, 'I ain't led no humdrum life'....

A riveting history of the battle that permanently turned the tide of the Civil War.

While Gettysburg is better known, Winston Groom makes clear in this engrossing narrative that Vicksburg was the more important battle from a strategic point of view. Re-creating the epic campaign that culminated at Vicksburg, Groom details the arduous struggle by the Union to gain control of the Mississippi River valley and to divide the Confederacy in two. He takes us back to 1861, when Lincoln chooses Ulysses S. Grant—seen at the time as a mediocre general with a drinking problem—to lead the Union army south from Illinois.

We follow Grant and his troops as they fight one campaign after another, including the famous engagements at Forts Henry and Donelson and the bloodbath at Shiloh, until, after almost a year, they close in on Vicksburg. We witness Grant’s seven long months of battle against the determined Confederate army, and the many failed Union attempts to take Vicksburg, during which thousands of soldiers on both sides would be buried and, ultimately, the fate of the Confederacy would be sealed. As Groom recounts this landmark confrontation, he brings the participants to life. We see Grant in all his grim determination, the feistiness of William Tecumseh Sherman, and the pride and intransigence of Confederate leaders from Jefferson Davis and General Joseph E. Johnston to General John C. Pemberton, the Philadelphia-born Rebel who commanded at Vicksburg and took the blame for losing.

A first-rate work of military history and an essential contribution to our understanding of the Civil War....