In this revelatory, dynamic biography, one of our finest historians, Benson Bobrick, profiles George H. Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who, Bobrick says, diminished his successes in their favor in...

Mortally wounded in battle when he was only thirty-one, the dashing J. E. B. Stuart, the South's "plumed warrior knight," stands with Stonewall Jackson as one of the Confederacy's most revered martyrs. Union General John Sedgwick called him "the greatest cavalryman ever foaled in America." Jeffry D. Wert, however, offers a more balanced assessment in this comprehensive biography. Wert's narrative portrait of Stuart-audacious and daring in battle,...