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About the Book
John Bell Hood brought a hang-dog look and a hard-fighting spirit to the Army of Tennessee. Once one of the ablest division commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, he found himself, by the spring of 1864, in the war’s Western Theater. Recently recovered from grievous wounds sustained at Chickamauga, he suddenly found himself thrust into command of the Confederacy’s ill-starred army even as Federals pounded on the door of the Deep South’s greatest untouched city, Atlanta.
His predecessor, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, had failed to stop the advance of armies under Federal commander William T. Sherman, who had pushed and maneuvered his way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, right to Atlanta’s very doorstep. Johnston had been able to do little to stop him.
The crisis could not have been more acute.
Hood, an aggressive risk-taker, threw his men into the fray with unprecedented vigor. Sherman welcomed it.
“We’ll give them all the fighting they want,” Sherman said.
He proved a man of his word.
In All the Fighting They Want, Georgia native Steve Davis, the world’s foremost authority on the Atlanta campaign, tells the tale of the last great struggle for the city. His Southern sensibility and his knowledge of the battle, accumulated over a lifetime of living on the ground, make this an indispensable addition to the acclaimed Emerging Civil War Series.
Review
“Telling the story of a large and complicated campaign with many moving parts and competing strategies is difficult. Writing it in a smooth, seamless, informative, and accurate manner is darn near impossible. Giving it in an illustrating, illuminating and entertaining fashion is [author Stephen] Davis! Both the beginner and buff alike will enjoy and appreciate this work and the companion piece [A Long and Blood Task].” – Civil War News
Stephen Davis, longtime Atlantan, has been a Civil Warrior since the fourth grade. He served as Book Review Editor for Blue & Gray magazine for more than twenty years, and is the author of more than a hundred articles on the Civil War in both scholarly and popular journals. His book Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston and the Yankee Heavy Battalions, was published in 2001. He is also the author of What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta (2012).
