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Peter Cozzens

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Peter Cozzens
Peter Cozzens is the award-winning author of seventeen books on the American Civil War and the American West. Cozzens also is a retired Foreign Service Officer, U. S. Department of State.

Cozzens'smost recent book, Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation, was published by Knopf in October 2020. It won the Western Writers of America Spur Award and is a finalist for the George Washington Prize.

His The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West was published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2016. Amazon selected it as a Best Book of November 2016. Smithsonian Magazine chose it as one of the ten best history books of 2016. It has won multiple awards, including the Gilder-Lehrman Prize for the finest book on military history published worldwide. A Pulitzer Prize-nominee, it also was a London Times book of the year and has been translated into several languages.

All of Cozzens' books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and/or the Military Book Club.

Cozzens’ This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga were both Main Selections of the History Book Club and were chosen by Civil War Magazine as two of the 100 greatest works ever written on the conflict.

The History Book Club called his five-volume Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars "the definitive resource on the military struggle for the American West."

His Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign was a Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2009.

He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times "Disunion" series, and he has written articles for Smithsonian Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, True West, America's Civil War, Civil War Times Illustrated, and MHQ, among other publications.

In 2002 Cozzens received the American Foreign Service Association’s highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent.

Cozzens is a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize, the Western Writers Association, the Authors' Guild, and of the Army and Navy Club.



Cozzens and his wife Antonia Feldman reside in Maryland.

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