The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields.

These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information.

Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O’Donnell. A roadside marker he happened to see in rural Virginia ignited years of research into the Civil War era special forces who were tasked by President Lincoln to undertake spy operations and secrete missions against Confederate units.

This week, he joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold ideas to talk about his new book, “The Unvanquished,” which masterfully tells the story of this forgotten chapter of history.

Taiyon Coleman has been writing since she was a child. At age 8, she announced to her family that a novel was in the works.

Today, she’s a published author and a professor of literature at St. Catherine University. But the road from there to here wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think.

Coleman joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what happened in the in-between. Some of it is detailed in her new collection of personal essays, “Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America.”

But the deeper story is held in Coleman’s body, in her voice, in her strength. Don’t miss this vulnerable and moving conversation about mothers and ancestors, writing and truth-telling and the power of being a teacher.

Guest:

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• Taiyon J. Coleman is a poet, a author and a literature professor at St. Paul’s St. Catherine University. Her new book is “Traveling without Moving.”

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America is steeped in the notion of rugged individualism. It’s comforting to think success is based on our own hard work and self determination.

But social scientist Robert Mark Rank says random chance governs far more of our lives that most of us want to admit.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Rank joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his new book, “The Random Factor.” He shares how luck and chance play a crucial role in shaping history, the natural world and our everyday lives.

Noor Khan is still reeling from the disintegration of her family when she stumbles across a library cart stacked with books in her new small-town high school.

In her heart, she just wants to finish her senior year and get back to Chicago as quickly as possible.

But when she learns the books are being removed by a group of parents trying to ban literature they deem as obscene, she is enraged.

Will her values force her to act, even if doing so puts a target on her back? Or is the fight not worth the cost?

That’s the premise of Samira Ahmed’s new YA novel, “This Book Won’t Burn.” No stranger to book bans herself, Ahmed joins host Kerri Miller this week on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom to read and how teenagers today are finding the courage to act against a national movement to ban books.

What do you imagine your death will look like?

It’s not a morbid or depressing question to Alua Arthur. She’s a death doula, and she firmly believes that giving thought to that question is the key to living a meaningful life.

Arthur herself thinks about dying a lot. As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she has detailed plans for what she’d like her deathbed to be like. But more importantly, she says living with an awareness of mortality helps her live with intention.

“Every day that I live is a day that I can get closer to the life that I actually want,” she says.

Arthur’s new book, “Briefly Perfectly Human” is both memoir and a surprisingly joyful treatise on why facing mortality is the key to living well. Don’t miss this wise, tender and inspiring conversation.

Guest:

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• Alua Arthur is a recovering attorney and the founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her new book is “Briefly Perfectly Human.”

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Who knew boring could be an asset?

In Lea Carpenter’s new spy novel, “Ilium,” we meet our young and restless unnamed narrator on a day when she’s urging herself to be less mundane, to take more risks.

She has no idea that the spies she’ll soon be working for want her precisely because she’s inexperienced, untested and ordinary.

She quickly gets pulled into a high-stakes mission against a target who has a complicated backstory when it comes to American intelligence forces.

Carpenter joined spy novel enthusiast Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. They talked about how Carpenter’s own family history inspired her interest in America’s intelligence agencies, why women are exceptionally good spies, and how family life both complicates and clarifies the work.

Guest:

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• Lea Carpenter is a novelist and a screenwriter. Her new book is “Ilium.”

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Birds, bats, freshwater mussels and a small catfish. They all slipped away in 2023, among the 21 species declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “We Loved It All.” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self.

“No one wants to tell our children how glorious it was before you were around,” she writes.

Millet joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how she carries hope, even as she mourns the destruction in the natural world.

Guest:

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• Lydia Millet is a novelist and conservationist. Her new book is, “We Loved It All: A Memory of Life.”

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Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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