A biography of the Confederate cavalry leader describes his poor childhood in Mississippi and his feats on the battlefield

A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest

Wills, Brian Steel

Biographies & Memoirs

Harpercollins

A biography of the Confederate cavalry leader describes his poor childhood in Mississippi, his adulthood as a millionaire slave trader, his rise through the ranks of the Confederate army, and his feats on the battlefield. National ad/promo.

Historical

Perennial

This is the best biography of one of the most exciting, colorful, and controversial figures of the Civil War. A renowned cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest perfected a ruthless hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that terrified Union soldiers and garnered the respect of warriors like William Sherman, who described his adversary as "that Devil, Forrest . . . the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side." Historian Bruce Catton rated Forrest "one of the authentic military geniuses of the whole war," but Brian Steel Wills covers much more than the cavalryman's incredible feats on the field of battle. He also provides the most thoughtful and complete analysis of Forrest's hardscrabble childhood in backwater Mississippi; his rise to wealth in the Memphis slave trade; his role in the infamous Fort Pillow massacre of black Union soldiers; his role as early leader and Grand Wizard of the first Ku Klux Klan; and his declining health and premature death in a reconstructing America.

The Confederacy's Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forest (Modern War Studies)

Univ Pr of Kansas

Although often counted among the Union's top five generals, George Henry Thomas has still not received his due. A Virginian who sided with the North in the Civil War, he was a more complicated commander than traditional views have allowed. Brian Wills now provides a new and more complete look at the life of a man known to history as "The Rock of Chickamauga," to his troops as "Old Pap," and to General William T. Sherman as a soldier who was "as true as steel." While biographers have long been hampered by Thomas's lack of personal papers, Wills has drawn on previously untapped sources-notably the correspondence of Thomas's contemporaries-to offer new insights into what made him tick. Focusing on Thomas's personality and motivations, Wills contributes revealing discussions of his style and approach to command and successfully captures his troubled interactions with other Union commanders, providing a particularly more evenhanded evaluation of his relationship with Grant. He also gives a more substantial account of battlefield action than can be found in other biographies, capturing the ebb and flow of key encounters—Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Stones River and Mill Springs, Peachtree Creek and Nashville—to help readers better understand Thomas's contributions to their outcomes. Throughout Wills presents a well-rounded individual whose complex views embraced the worlds of professional military service and scientific inquisitiveness, a man known for attention to detail and compassion to subordinates. We also meet a sharp-tempered person whose disdain for politics hurt his prospects for advancement as much as it reflected positively on his character, and Wills offers new insight into why Thomas might not have progressed as quickly up the ladder of command as he might have liked. More deeply researched than other biographies, Wills's work situates Thomas squarely in his own time to provide readers with a more thorough and balanced life story of this enigmatic Union general. It is a definitive military history that gives us a new and needed picture of the Rock of Chickamauga—a man whose devotion to duty and ideals made him as true as steel.

George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel

Arts & Literature

University Press of Kansas

Of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in the Civil War, two-thirds, by some estimates, were felled by disease; untold others were lost to accidents, murder, suicide, sunstroke, and drowning. Meanwhile thousands of civilians in both the north and south perished—in factories, while caught up in battles near their homes, and in other circumstances associated with wartime production and supply. These “inglorious passages,” no less than the deaths of soldiers in combat, devastated the armies in the field and families and communities at home. Inglorious Passages for the first time gives these noncombat deaths due consideration. In letters, diaries, obituaries, and other accounts, eminent Civil War historian Brian Steel Wills finds the powerful and poignant stories of fatal accidents and encounters and collateral civilian deaths that occurred in the factories and fields of the Union and the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865. Wills retrieves these stories from obscurity and the cold calculations of statistics to reveal the grave toll these losses exacted on soldiers and civilians, families and society. In its intimate details and its broad scope, his book demonstrates that for those who served and those who supported them, noncombat fatalities were as significant as battle deaths in impressing the full force of the American Civil War on the people called upon to live through it. With the publication of Inglorious Passages, those who paid the supreme sacrifice, regardless of situation or circumstance, will at last be included in the final tabulation of the nation’s bloodiest conflict.

Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War (Modern War Studies)

History

Americas

Richard B. Harwell AwardAlthough often counted among the Union's top five generals, George Henry Thomas has still not received his due. A Virginian who sided with the North in the Civil War, he was a more complicated commander than traditional views have allowed. Brian Wills now provides a new and more complete look at the life of a man known to history as "The Rock of Chickamauga," to his troops as "Old Pap," and to General William T. Sherman as a soldier who was "as true as steel."While biographers have long been hampered by Thomas's lack of personal papers, Wills has drawn on previously untapped sources-notably the correspondence of Thomas's contemporaries-to offer new insights into what made him tick. Focusing on Thomas's personality and motivations, Wills contributes revealing discussions of his style and approach to command and successfully captures his troubled interactions with other Union commanders, providing a particularly more evenhanded evaluation of his relationship with Grant. He also gives a more substantial account of battlefield action than can be found in other biographies, capturing the ebb and flow of key encounters—Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Stones River and Mill Springs, Peachtree Creek and Nashville—to help readers better understand Thomas's contributions to their outcomes.Throughout Wills presents a well-rounded individual whose complex views embraced the worlds of professional military service and scientific inquisitiveness, a man known for attention to detail and compassion to subordinates. We also meet a sharp-tempered person whose disdain for politics hurt his prospects for advancement as much as it reflected positively on his character, and Wills offers new insight into why Thomas might not have progressed as quickly up the ladder of command as he might have liked.More deeply researched than other biographies, Wills's work situates Thomas squarely in his own time to provide readers with a more thorough and balanced life story of this enigmatic Union general. It is a definitive military history that gives us a new and needed picture of the Rock of Chickamauga—a man whose devotion to duty and ideals made him as true as steel.

From Birth of a Nation to Cold Mountain, hundreds of directors, actors, and screenwriters have used the Civil War to create compelling cinema. However, each generation of moviemakers has resolved the tug of war between entertainment value and historical accuracy differently. Historian Brian Steel Wills takes readers on a journey through the portrayal of the war in film, exploring what Hollywood got right and wrong, how the films influenced each other, and, ultimately, how the movies reflect America's changing understandings of the conflict and of the nation.

Gone with the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

During the Civil War, North Carolinian William Dorsey Pender established himself as one of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's best young generals. He served in most of the significant engagements of the war in the eastern theater while under the command of Joseph E. Johnston at Seven Pines and Robert E. Lee from the Seven Days to Gettysburg. His most crucial contributions to Confederate success came at the battles of Second Manassas, Shepherdstown, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. After an effective first day at Gettysburg, Pender was struck by a shell and disabled, necessitating his return to Virginia for what he hoped would be only an extended convalescence. Although Pender initially survived the wound, he died soon thereafter due to complications from his injury.
In this thorough biography of Pender, noted Civil War historian Brian Steel Wills examines both the young general's military career and his domestic life. While Pender devoted himself to military service, he also embraced the Episcopal Church and was baptized before his command in the field. According to Wills, Pender had an insatiable quest for "glory" in both earthly and heavenly realms, and he delighted in his role as a husband and father. In Pender's voluminous correspondence with his wife, Fanny, he shared his beliefs and offered views and opinions on a vast array of subjects. In the end, Wills suggests that Pender's story captures both the idealistic promise and the despair of a war that cost the lives of many Americans and changed the nation forever.

Confederate General William Dorsey Pender: The Hope of Glory (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)

LSU Press

In 1863 Confederate forces under Lieutenant General James Longstreet, while scouring Southside Virginia for badly needed supplies, threatened the Union garrison in Suffolk. For the residents of surrounding Nansemond, Isle of Wight, and Southampton Counties, the Suffolk campaign followed an exhausting and deadly pattern. Already subjected to the demands of waves of soldiers, first Southern recruits and then Union occupation troops, the people of the region faced the severest tests the Civil War could impose upon human beings.
In The War Hits Home, Brian Steel Wills tells the story of these real people in the crucible of war. Reconstructing life for soldiers from the region on the battlefield and for civilians in the homes of southeastern Virginia, Wills provides a full depiction of what life was like for the ordinary person--black, white, soldier, citizen, Unionist, or secessionist--contending with domestic, economic, social, and military hardship in the contest of sectionalism and war. Wills employs their individual experiences to illustrate the impact of the war on a human scale, on soldiers and their relatives, North and South. We witness battlefield horror and family despair, African Americans' embrace of freedom, and the persistence of Confederate nationalism among most whites in the region.
Taken as a whole, The War Hits Home is a sweeping but extraordinarily detailed canvas of a fractured American South.

The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Nation Divided)

Univ of Virginia Pr

"You are making history today," the University of Virginia Extension Division agent Samuel Crockett observed to a gathering of students and faculty on September 15, 1954, in Wise, Virginia. The occasion was the opening convocation of what would become Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia, and the 109 students assembled, many of whom were Korean War veterans or women, were indeed part of something quite special. People in Southwest Virginia and friends in Charlottesville―not the least being University of Virginia President Colgate W. Darden Jr.―had worked tirelessly to make this day possible. A snowbound discussion at the Colonial Inn in Wise had resulted in the conversion of the local County Poor Farm into the only branch of the University of Virginia.
 Since those humble beginnings, the College at Wise has flourished, growing from a two-year certificate-granting institution into a four-year baccalaureate-degree-granting college in the late 1960s. In 1999 the college completed a transition from Clinch Valley College to the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Having journeyed over uncertain ground with respect to its student population and its relationship with the University of Virginia, the College at Wise has in recent years boasted its highest historical student enrollments, garnered a national reputation as a public liberal arts college, and still operates as the university’s only branch.
 Published for Wise’s fiftieth anniversary in September 2004, Brian Steel Wills’s history is essential reading for the college’s alumni, faculty and administrators, and for anyone interested in a heroic chapter in the history of public higher education in Virginia.

No Ordinary College: A History of The University of Virginia's College at Wise

University of Virginia Press

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Books by Wills, Brian Steel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wills, Brian Steel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest

A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest

The Confederacy's Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forest (Modern War Studies)

George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel

Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the American Civil War (Modern War Studies)

George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel

Gone with the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema

Confederate General William Dorsey Pender: The Hope of Glory (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)

The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Nation Divided)

No Ordinary College: A History of The University of Virginia's College at Wise