"Generally, volumes in the Voices of the Civil War series are edited diaries, letter collections, or journals by a single soldier or civilian. In Christopher Thrasher's unique contribution to the series, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee, the author draws upon diaries, letters, newspapers, memoirs, official reports, and genealogical sources to capture from as many points of view as possible the experiences of ordinary soldiers in the Army of Tennessee from the Atlanta Campaign to the end of the war. In addition to extensive primary documentation, Thrasher provides context for understanding how events developed from 1864 to the total collapse of General John Bell Hood's forces. While volumes have been written on the Atlanta Campaign or the Battles of Nashville and Franklin, no previous historian has constructed what amounts to a sweeping social history of the Army of Tennessee"--

Following the Battle of Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee was in full retreat, from the battle lines south of Nashville to the Tennessee River at the Alabama state line. Ferocious engagements broke out along the way as Hood's small rearguard, harried by Federal Cavalry brigades, fought a 10-day running battle over 100 miles of impoverished countryside during one of the worst winters on record.

Bobrick tells the story of Benjamin "Webb" Baker, his great-grandfather. Webb enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 and thereafter suffered through horrid conditions in camp and absolute hell in combat. Bobrick's fascinating look at the Civil War also contains a heretofore unreleased collection of Webb's letters.

The soldiers on both sides of the Civil War were united by a common history, and yet the legacy of this past was ambiguous, upholding both rebellion and union. Union and Confederate men went to war as Americans, convinced they fought an un-American, savage enemy. The war they fought was as emotional and catastrophic as any in history, a violent crucible that forged a new national identity. Civil War Soldiers is a fresh and compelling attempt to fathom the war's significance—then and now—and makes immediate the charged issues and bitter ironies of a nation torn by a conflict over the common ideals of liberty and justice. Drawing on diaries and letters, the focus of this pioneering study is on the men who fought, caught up in a conflict whose causes and consequences seemed as complex and contradictory to the soldiers themselves as they do to us. Reid Mitchell re-creates their experience and discusses the questions one would have most wanted to ask them: Why did you fight? How did you feel about slavery and race? What did you take home from the war? What legacy have you left us? "Fresh insights, startling descriptions, and poignant human detail about the war from the men who fought it."—Chicago Tribune

Linderman traces each soldier's path from the exhilaration of enlistment to the disillusionment of battle to postwar alienation. He provides a rare glimpse of the personal battle that raged within soldiers then and now.

Red Clay to Richmond is a thoroughly researched book dredged from Civil War trenches, family attics, and dusty archives. John Fox has skillfully woven together the never-before-told-story of the 35th Georgia Infantry Regiment as these Southern patriots signed up for what most thought would be a short war. Using many previously unpublished primary accounts, Fox follows these men as they moved from their red clay homesteads in the great State of Georgia to the Confederate capital at Richmond. Based on numerous letters, diaries and records, this book is much more than a mere battlefield account because it details the daily life and voice of the average Confederate soldier. It reveals the true American spirit of courage exhibited through deprivation and hardship, not only at the battlefront for the soldiers but also for the family members at the hearth. More than twenty maps and over seventy photographs grace the pages to further aid the reader in understanding the epochal struggle of these Georgians.