About 57,000 books have been published on the American Civil War so what possibly could be left to explore?

Quite a bit, it turns out, particularly regarding the bloodiest battle of the war and in American history, Antietam. In one day of savage fighting on Sept. 17, 1862, an estimated 6,500 soldiers were killed and at least 15,000 wounded.

In fact-stuffed but engaging, thought-provoking pages, “A Day in September” by Stephen Budiansky examines how ill-prepared we as a nation were for war, but more significantly, what we learned and how those advances led to better military training, rapid improvements in battlefield medical care and the beginnings of a reconciling of the differences in North and South society, values and beliefs.

Some key American institutions at the outbreak of the Civil War were astonishingly primitive and Antietam revealed just how bad. Before the Civil War, for example, most graduates of the U.S. Military Academy were well-schooled in math and engineering, much less so in military tactics. Many soldiers lacked even rudimentary training such as target shooting.

Medical care was primitive. For example, most doctors of the Civil War era did not understand how disease was transmitted.

What might have made the book even more engaging would be to carry the lessons learned from these failings to the present day.

This is an absorbing, illuminating, compelling book that calls on us to consider the advances in military strategy, medical care and diplomacy that Antietam gave us at horrific cost.

It also asks us to consider a rift between science and religion that emerged after the war. The book notes that religious leaders also fell short, telling the populace on both sides during the Civil War that God was on their side, but as the author quotes Lincoln as observing, one side must be wrong.

Then and now, reasoned discussions and diplomacy largely failed, and some Americans are openly talking about a potential Civil War II. They would not if we absorbed some of the lessons from this book. — Jeff Rowe, Associated Press

By the time you finish Nate Silver’s new book, you’ll probably want to do something risky.

Not for the sake of adrenaline or to the point of being reckless, but because you might be convinced that the occasional gamble — more than most people are comfortable with — is worth it.

In “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” Silver compellingly theorizes that humans are in general too risk averse, and that those who can discerningly fight that impulse often benefit greatly in life.

In addition to his day job as a forecaster, statistician and writer, Silver is an accomplished poker player. He fittingly, then, begins his analysis of those with high tolerances for risk through a detailed look at the game and those who play it.

It turns out, Silver argues, that poker players, astronauts and hedge fund managers have more in common than people may assume, even on a physiological level. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk,” Mark Zuckerberg famously said — a widely-held sentiment in Silicon Valley that Silver explores at length in this book.

Given his affinity for poker, Silver tends to belabor that lens through which he looks — perhaps to a fault. Those uninterested in those stats or strategies may have a hard time getting through this book. But if you don’t mind or are intrigued by the game, Silver eventually broadens his cohort, notably in what might be his most interesting chapter discussing the “habits of highly successful risk-takers.”

“On the Edge” is a thought-provoking interdisciplinary book that covers a host of timely topics from artificial intelligence and political theory to what happens when risk takers go too far. — Krysta Fauria, Associated Press