Wicked River

Before dredging made the Mississippi a shipping lane and Mark Twain made it a myth, the river was a dangerous and peculiar world, which journalist Lee Sandlin reconstructs from the early 1800s to the siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Working from firsthand accounts, he describes river pirates mixing with future presidents, religious visionaries traveling beside thieves, and the floating cities of boats that gathered by the levees each night for music, drinking and gambling. Set pieces include a tornado flattening Natchez, an ice floe crushing the St. Louis harbor, secret Mardi Gras revels and the sinking of the Sultana. Sandlin portrays a society on the verge of sweeping change.

Ryan Holiday picked it among his best book recommendations of 2012, naming it as one of the unusual Civil War era books he loves.