Eastern National, a partner to the National Park Service, invites the public to meet author Brian Steele Wills, inside the Visitor Center at Chickamauga Battlefield on Saturday. Dr. Wills will be available beginning at 10 a.m. to sign his books, George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel and The Confederacy’s Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest, with a special presentation at 1 p.m.
Reviews of the books:
George Henry Thomas: As True As Steel - Focusing on Thomas's personality and motivations, Dr. 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 even-handed evaluation of his relationship with Grant. He also gives a substantial account of battlefield action, 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. Wills' work situates Thomas squarely in his own time to provide readers with a more thorough and balanced life story of this enigmatic Union general.
The Confederacy’s Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest - A renowned cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest perfected a ruthless hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that terrified Union soldiers and garnered the respect of warriors like William Sherman, who described his adversary as "that Devil, Forrest . . . the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side." Dr. Wills covers much more than the cavalryman's incredible feats on the field of battle. He also provides the most thoughtful and complete analysis of Forrest's hardscrabble childhood in backwater Mississippi; his rise to wealth in the Memphis slave trade; his role in the infamous Fort Pillow massacre of black Union soldiers; his role as early leader and Grand Wizard of the first Ku Klux Klan; and his declining health and premature death in a reconstructing America.
Review of the author:
Brian Steele Wills is the director of the Center for the Study of the Civil War Era at Kennesaw State University, where he is professor of history. Dr. Wills is the recipient of the 2013 Richard Barksdale Harwell Award presented by the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta. In 2000, Dr. Wills received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of eleven recipients from all faculty members at public and private institutions across the state. He was named Kenneth Asbury Professor of History and won both the Teaching award and the Research and Publication award from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.