Discover the Best Books Written by Bruce Catton

Charles Bruce Catton (October 9, 1899 – August 28, 1978) was an American historian and journalist known best for his books concerning the American Civil War. Known as a narrative historian, Catton specialized in popular history, featuring interesting characters and historical vignettes in addition to the basic facts, dates, and analyses. His books were researched well and included footnotes. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.

Charles Bruce Catton was born in Petoskey, Michigan, to George R. and Adela M. (Patten) Catton and raised in Benzonia, Michigan. His father was a Congregationalist minister who accepted a teaching position at Benzonia Academy and later became the academy's headmaster. As a boy, Catton first heard the reminiscences of the aged veterans who had fought in the Civil War. In his memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train (1972), Catton explained how their stories made a lasting impression on him:

[These stories gave] a color and a tone not merely to our village life, but to the concept of life with which we grew up ... I think I was always subconsciously driven by an attempt to restate that faith and to show where it was properly grounded, how it grew out of what a great many young men on both sides felt and believed and were brave enough to do.

In 1916, Catton began attending Oberlin College, but he quit without completing a degree because of World War I. After serving briefly with the United States Navy during World War I, Catton became a reporter and editor for the newspapers The Cleveland News (as a freelance reporter), the Boston American (1920–1924), and the Cleveland The Plain Dealer (1925). 

From 1926 to 1941, he worked for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a Scripps-Howard syndicate), for which he wrote editorials and book reviews, as well as serving as a Washington, D.C. correspondent. Catton tried twice to complete his studies but found himself repeatedly distracted by his newspaper work. Oberlin College awarded him an honorary degree in 1956.

At the start of World War II, Catton was too old for military service. In 1941, he accepted a position as Director of Information for the War Production Board. Later, he had similar jobs in the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior. His experiences as a federal employee prepared him to write his first book, The War Lords Of Washington, in 1948. Although the book was not a commercial success, it inspired Catton to quit federal employment to become a full-time author.

In 1954, Catton accepted the position as founding editor of the new magazine American Heritage. Catton served initially as a writer, reviewer, and editor. In the first issue, he wrote: We intend to deal with that great, unfinished, and illogically inspiring story of the American people doing, being, and becoming. Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end, it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.