Smoke, Sound And Fury: The Civil War Memoirs of Major-general Lew Wallace, U. S. Volunteers

Lew Wallace was first an Indiana lawyer whose leadership and talent for action won him fame in the Civil War. Brash, handsome and charismatic, he quickly rose from colonel of a volunteer regiment to major-general of a division. A popular hero in western Virginia and the capture of Fort Donelson, he later saw his military career nearly ruined at Shiloh, where a series of disastrous miscommunications delayed his division's arrival on the field.

Embroiled in controversy, determined to return to the field, Wallace helped turn aside Confederate invasions of Kentucky and Ohio and was hailed as the savior of Cincinnati. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln made him a military governor in Maryland, where he seized an opportunity for redemption. Assembling a small Union force at an obscure railway point called Monocacy Junction, Wallace blocked Confederate General Jubal Early's path to Washington. Fighting desperately against long odds, he lost the battle but delayed Early's rebel army long enough to prevent it from seizing the capital-a sacrifice unparalleled in the history of the republic.

Adapted from Lew Wallace: An Autobiography, published in 1906, this book offers the sights and sounds of the Civil War filtered through the memory of a keen-eyed romantic.