• A first-rate historian: Benson Bobrick is the author of several celebrated books, including The Fated Sky and Testament . His work has been hailed as “Lucid and vivid” by The New Yorker , “elegant” by The Washington Post Book World , and “engrossing…detailed and gripping” by the Chicago Tribune . And The New York Times Book Review says, “Bobrick is perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today.”. • A fascinating biography of an underappreciated American hero: George H. Thomas was, Bobrick argues, the greatest general of the Civil War. Known as the Rock of Chickamauga, Thomas was regarded by his contemporaries as the equal of Grant and Sherman. In the entire Civil War, he never lost a battle or a movement, and he was the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field. But Thomas never wrote a memoir and history neglected him. Until now. . • Powerfully told and grippingly rendered: With his characteristic flair for drama and fast-paced writing, Bobrick takes readers onto the battlefields, into the smoke of gunpowder and the stench of bodies. From the parade grounds of West Point to the bloody Battle of Chattanooga, Bobrick masterfully renders every detail, right down to the buckles on Thomas’s boots and the courage in his heart. Backed by scholarly research, this informed and vivid biography at last brings Thomas’s tale to readers everywhere..

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.

Manuscript copy of Van Horne's biography of Major-General George H. Thomas, leader in the Union Army during the Civil War. This manuscript varies somewhat from the published edition.

General George H. Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga” of the history books, was a Virginian who chose the northern side in the Civil War. While Thomas was considered a traitor by his family, his military superiors regarded him with a certain mistrust because of his southern background. Nonetheless, Thomas was prominent in the battles of Mill Springs, Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, and Nashville, and was immortalized at Chickamauga, where he tenaciously held the field until ordered to withdraw.