Author Stephen Crane was born in 1871 Newark. He died at 28 in a German sanitarium of tuberculosis. When The Red Badge of Courage was first published in 1895, it sent shock waves through the literary community for its unvarnished realism about a young private in the Union Army during the Civil War who flees from battle filled with shame but returns as a flag-bearer. The book was twice made into a movie (1951 and 1974). It was re-published in 1982 in a longer version using Crane’s original manuscript.