Following the fall of Atlanta, rebel commander John Bell Hood rallied his demoralized troops and marched them off the Tennessee, desperately hoping to draw Sherman after him and forestall the Confederacy's defeat. But Sherman refused to be lured and began his infamous "March to the Sea," while Hood charged headlong into catastrophe. In this compelling dramatic account of a final and fatal invasion by the Confederate Army of Tennessee, Wile Sword illuminates the missed opportunities, senseless bloody assaults, poor command decisions, and stubborn pride that resulted in 23,500 Confederate losses—including 7,00 casualties in one battle—and the pulverization of the South's second largest army. Sword follows Hood and his army as they let an early advantage and possible victory slip away at Spring Hill, then engage in a reckless and ill-fated frontal attack on Franklin, often called the "Gettysburg of the West." Despite that disaster, Hood refuses to yield and presses on the Nashville and a two-day bloodbath that unhinges what is left of his battered troops—the worst defeat suffered by any army during the war. Telling the story from both the Confederate and the Union perspectives, Sword pursues personalities as well as battles and troop strategy. He portrays Hood as a gutsy yet irresponsible leader—"a fool with a license to kill his own men"—whose valiant but rapidly dwindling troops were no match for the methodical General George G. Thomas and his better prepared—and entrenched—Union army. Hood, however, was not entirely to blame for Confederate failures, says Sword, who shows how decision making and actions—both good and bad, logical and chaotic—by key players on both sides helped determine the battles' outcomes.

An Award-Winning Historian Dramatically Re-Creates a Turning Point of the Civil War
It was one of the most startling events of the civil war, the "hour of destiny" for the Union. Faced with the prospect of catastrophic defeat, the North's greatest generals--Ulysses Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Thomas, and Phil Sheridan--were commanding a battle fror the besieged city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Suddenly, as an aghast Grant and Thomas watched, the beleaguered federal tropps began a headlong, climactic, seemingly suicidal charge up the face of a six-hundred-foot-high mountain ridge overlooking the city, under ferocious fire from the Confederate infantry that held the ridge.
The siege of Chattanooga and its stuffing turnabout form the core of Wiley Sword's lively narrative. Dozens of previously unpublished photographs, maps, and excepts from private journals, and letters enhance this vivid account. Written with novelistic flair and a historian's authority, "Mountains Touched with Fire "captures every side of this crucial Civil War battle whose aftermath sealed the fate of the South.

Military history buffs and scholars will revel in Wiley Sword's exciting narrative, the first comprehensive history of the United States-Indian war of 1790-1795. The struggle for the Old Northwest Territory (modern-day Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan) was as vicious and bitter a conflict as any war in our history. Indeed, the very survival of the new nation was in doubt.The years from 1790 to 1795 may have been the turning point in Indian white relations on the North American continent. At this time the Indians of the Ohio country-tribes such as the Miamis, the Shawnees, and the Ottawas-engaged in a last-ditch effort to stop the settlers who were moving west into the ""Black Forest"" wilderness of mid America. They were aided by British agents, based in Detroit, who manipulated the Indian confederacy in an attempt to recoup some of their losses from the Revolutionary War. Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Clair led early disastrous campaigns, including possibly the worst defeat of a United States army at the hands of Indians. Ultimately, President George Washington assigned ""Mad Anthony"" Wayne to rebuild and expand the army, despite considerable domestic opposition. This is the most detailed history yet published of the battles and skirmishes, the futile treaty negotiations with the Indians, and the tribes' intrigues among themselves and with the British, leading to Wayne's final victory 'over the Indian confederacy at Fallen Timbers. Most impressive is the extent and depth of the author's research in primary and secondary sources. With extraordinary vividness Sword recounts the battles and the life in the American and Indian encampments, quoting from diaries, letters, and statements by American officers and soldiers as well as the accounts of their enemies, such as Little Turtle of the Miamis, Blue Jacket of the Shawnees, and Joseph Brant of the Iroquois. Nor does Sword neglect the activities and life-ways of Britain's traders, agents, and haughty commandants.