TRUDEAU, Noah Andre 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born February 23, 1949, in Staten Island, NY; son of Maurice Noah (a male nurse) and Bridget B. (a registered nurse; maiden name, Marcinkowski) Trudeau; married Angie Hogencamp, July 21, 1973 (divorced, October 17, 1979). Education: State University of New York—Albany, B.A., 1971. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Washington, DC. Office—National Public Radio, 2025 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Agent—Raphael Sagalyn Agency, 4825 Bethesda Avenue, Suite 302, Bethesda, MD 20814.

CAREER:

WMHT-FM Radio, Schenectady, NY, program producer, 1973-77; National Public Radio, Washington, DC, producer for cultural programs, beginning 1977, currently executive producer for cultural programs.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Local Radio Program Award, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1975; Fletcher Pratt Award, Civil War Roundtable of New York, 1989, for Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbour, May-June, 1864.

WRITINGS:

Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbour, May-June, 1864, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1989, revised with new preface by the author, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2000.

The Last Citadel: The Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864-April 1865, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1991.

Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994.

The Campaign to Appomattox, Eastern National Park and Monument Association (Conshohocken, PA), 1995.

The Siege of Petersburg, Eastern National Park and Monument Association (Conshohocken, PA), 1995.

(Editor) Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865, Kent State University Press (Dayton, OH), 1996.

Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to magazines, including Cinefantastique, Fanfare, High Fidelity/Musical America, and Civil War Times Illustrated.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Research on the final months of the Civil War, from the military, social, cultural, and political perspectives.

SIDELIGHTS:

Noah Andre Trudeau is executive producer of cultural programs for National Public Radio. He is also the author of several books on the U.S. Civil War.

Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbour, May-June 1864 describes the brutal period that was the beginning of the end of the Civil War: General Grant versus General Lee in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania, and at Cold Harbour. Trudeau follows the action through eyewitness accounts of the battles, as ordinary soldiers describe the carnage, the deaths of friends, and their own suffering in battle. Trudeau also includes accounts by women who nursed the fallen soldiers, as well as by African-American solders. The book won the Fletcher Pratt Award for 1989.

In Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865, Trudeau recounts the details of the final months of the Civil War—from the last battles and the Confederate surrender, to the assassination of President Lincoln and the return of troops to their homes—Northern troops to victory parades, and Southern troops to devastated farms and towns.

Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865, which Trudeau edited, is a collection of letters home from the men of the 55th, an African-American troop. Trudeau gathered them from manuscript collections, newspapers, and pension files, and presents a complete chronological account of the history of the 55th. The letters cover training, camp life, the men's relationships with the regiment's white officers, and their sense of pride in their regiment as a unique and strong fighting unit. They make clear that inequalities in pay, prisoner exchanges, duty, and rank between the regiment and its white counterparts, as well as widespread racism, took a toll on the morale of the regiment. However, the men continued to fight because they believed in the cause they were fighting for. In Civil War History, a reviewer noted that Trudeau has "given the regiment a human face" and that it "shows how the lives of ordinary individuals… intersected with the extraordinary events of America's great crisis."

Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865 also explores the lives of African-American soldiers in the Civil War. On Pressroom.com, a reviewer described the book as "mandatory reading for serious students of African American history as it allows an appreciation of the details and nuances of black participation in the battles of the Civil War."

Trudeau once told CA: "I was raised on the superb 'popular' histories of John Toland, Walter Lord, Charles Whiting, Cornelius Ryan, and Burke Davis. I like to think I combine their focus on the human stories within large events with my own perspective, which has been shaped by post-Vietnam skepticism, media immediacy and realism, and blunt vividness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AB Bookman's Weekly, July 1, 1996, review of Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865, p. 14.

Booklist, October 1, 1991, review of The Last Citadel: The Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864-April 1865, pp. 238, 310; April 1, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 1421; January 1, 1998, Roland Green, review of Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865, p. 769; July, 2002, Jay Freeman, review of Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, p. 1819.

Bookwatch, July, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 10.

Book World, November 3, 1991, review of The Last Citadel, p. 17; July 17, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 3.

Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1989.

Choice, October, 1996, review of Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865, p. 352.

Civil War History, September, 1997, Paul A. Cimbala, review of Voices of the 55th, p. 262; September, 1998, Joseph P. Reidy, review of Like Men of War, p. 223.

Guardian Weekly, February 23, 1992, review of The Last Citadel, p. 20.

Journal of Southern History, May, 1991, review of Bloody Roads South, p. 336; August, 1993, review of The Last Citadel, p. 564.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1991, review of The Last Citadel, p. 1213; March 1, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 291; December 1, 1997, review of Like Men of War, p. 1762: May 15, 2002, review of Gettysburg, p. 723.

Kliatt, March, 1999, review of Like Men of War, p. 38.

Library Journal, October 15, 1991, review of The Last Citadel, p. 98; March 1, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 102; December, 1997, Brooks D. Simpson, review of Like Men of War, p. 123; September 1, 2001, review of Like Men of War, p. 65.

New England Quarterly, September, 1999, review of Like Men of War, p. 507.

New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1993, review of The Last Citadel, p. 50; February 14, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 72; February 19, 1996, review of Voices of the 55th, p. 200; December 1, 1997, review of Like Men of War, p. 36; June 3, 2002, review of Gettysburg, p. 78.

School Library Journal, June, 1999, review of Like Men of War, p. 159.

Southern Living, July, 1994, review of Out of the Storm, p. 37.

ONLINE

Louisiana State University Press Web site,http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/ (August 21, 2002), author biographical information and book summaries of Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbour, May-June, 1864 and Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865.

Pressroom.com,http://www.pressroom.com/ (August 21, 2002), review of Like Men of War.*