Angus Konstam hails from the Orkney Islands and is the author of over 15 books, many of which are published by Osprey. Formerly the Curator of Weapons in the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, he also served as the Chief Curator of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida. He is now based in London, where he combines a freelance museum consultancy business with a career as a historian and writer.

Donato Spedaliere was born in 1967 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and moved to Tuscany at the age of 10, where he still lives. Having studied at the Instituto Nazionale di Belle Arti in Florence he served in the Italian Army as a paratrooper. Since 1995 he has worked as a professional illustrator for publishers in Italy and abroad and he is the chief illustrator of Alina Illustrazioni, the company he founded with his wife in 1998. Sarah Sulemsohn Spedaliere was born in Romania in 1952. Her family emigrated to Israel when she was 10. Following a degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Sarah lectured at the University of Florence as well as completing an architecture degree in 1994. Since 1998 she has worked at Alina Ilustrazioni, which she founded with her husband Donato.

The 50 years before the American Civil War saw a boom in the construction of coastal forts in the United States of America. These stone and brick forts stretched from New England to the Florida Keys, and as far as the Mississippi River. At the start of the war some were located in the secessionist states, and many fell into Confederate hands. Although a handful of key sites stayed in Union hands throughout the war, the remainder had to be won back through bombardment or assault. This book examines the design, construction and operational history of those fortifications, such as Fort Sumter, Fort Morgan and Fort Pulaski, which played a crucial part in the course of the Civil War.