Brian Steel Wills
Although often counted among the Unionâ€™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 â€œThe Rock of Chickamauga,â€ to his troops as â€œOld Pap,â€ and to General William T. Sherman as a soldier who was â€œas true as steel.â€,While biographers have long been hampered by Thomasâ€™s lack of personal papers, Wills has drawn on previously untapped sourcesâ€”notably the correspondence of Thomasâ€™s contemporariesâ€”to offer new insights into what made him tick. Focusing on Thomasâ€™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 encountersâ€”Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Stones River and Mill Springs, Peachtree Creek and Nashvilleâ€”to help readers better understand Thomasâ€™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, Willsâ€™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 Chickamaugaâ€”a man whose devotion to duty and ideals made him as true as steel.
Military History,Civil War,History,Biography,American History,American Civil War,Military,Military History,Literature,19th Century,Nonfiction,War,Military Fiction,Literature,American
George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel