Savas Beatie announced the release of the latest in their Emerging Civil War series, Battle Above the Clouds: Lifting the Siege of Chattanooga and the Battle of Lookout Mountain, October 16 - November 24, 1863, by author David A. Powell, which looks at the beginning of the struggle for Chattanooga through the iconic Battle of Lookout Mountain.
Review for the book:
In October 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland was besieged in Chattanooga, all but surrounded by familiar opponents: The Confederate Army of Tennessee. The Confederates, once jubilant at having routed the Federals at Chickamauga and driven them back into the apparent trap of Chattanooga’s trenches, found their own circumstances increasingly difficult to bear. In the immediate aftermath of their victory, the South rejoiced; the Confederacy’s own disasters of the previous summer—Vicksburg and Gettysburg—were seemingly reversed. Then came stalemate in front of those same trenches. The Confederates held the high ground, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, but they could not completely seal off Chattanooga from the north.
The Union responded. Reinforcements were on the way. A new man arrived to take command: Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate General Braxton Bragg, unwilling to launch a frontal attack on Chattanooga’s defenses, sought victory elsewhere, diverting troops to East Tennessee.
“Battle Above the Clouds is the first stand-alone treatment of what is perhaps one of the most famous events of the American Civil War - the storming of Lookout Mountain by Union troops on November 24, 1863,” said Mr. Powell. “Lookout Mountain was not the most decisive event of the war, but it certainly ranks as one of the most dramatic, witnessed by tens of thousands in both armies.”
Mr. Powell is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (1983) with a BA in history. He has published numerous articles in various magazines, and more than 15 historical simulations of different battles. For the past decade, Mr. Powell's focus has been on the epic battle of Chickamauga, and he is nationally recognized for his tours of that important battlefield. The results of that study are the volumes The Maps of Chickamauga (2009) and Failure in the Saddle (2010), as well as The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy. The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle was published in 2014, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave appeared in September 2015, and the final volume, Barren Victory, was released in September 2016. Mr. Powell and his wife Anne live and work in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He is vice president of Airsped, Inc., a specialized delivery firm.