The period of time covered in this page is probably of foremost interest for people of today. Unlike earlier periods, the Modern period relates directly to the life and times of you, my readers, and is also the only truly open-ended period in my project.
From the colonial period to the post-colonialism of today, this is a time of war on a scale never before seen in human history. The appalling butcher's bill of the two world wars is only quantitatively different from the correspondingly awful waste of human life during the Napoleonic wars (a series of wars that have been described as "the first true world war"). We live now in a period of relative peace, where wars are fought by proxy on behalf of nations too powerful to make direct war on each other, for fear of mutual annihilation.
That this period has also been a period of growing democratic freedom, increasing wealth, improving standards of living and education and general enlightenment, does not change the fact that a lot of people have died violently to make these changes take place.
In the Modern period, my interest lies chiefly with the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and with the American Civil War.
Antietam on the Web, a page devoted to the bloodiest battle in the Civil War.
Letters of the Civil War, a compilation of letters from the soldiers, sailors, nurses, politicians, ministers and journalists from the newspapers of the cities and towns of Massachusetts. April 1861 - December 1865.