My main impression of this book is that it is flamboyantly written, The title gives a foretaste. It is hard to say that this very battle was when Dixie died. Many other battles lay claim to that epithet, from Fort Donelson to Chattanooga, and from Gettysburg to Five Forks. It is clear that the battle was important. It weakened John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee irreparably, though the army still was around for some more big battles in Tennessee. William Sherman's victory facilitated the occupation of Atlanta more than a month later, which changed the mood of the Union electorate enough to get Abraham Lincoln reelected in November. Interestingly, Sherman hardly appears as an active character in the book.

Throughout the book Ecelbarger writes in kind of a borderline poetic diction which is sort of entertaining but can get tiresome. In battle scenes (most of the book) he is more straightforward, but even there sometimes slides into an almost epic kind of vocabulary.

However, on the other side, Ecelbarger met my desiderata for a battle narrative: he introduced leading figures in a way to make them memorable; he went to great lengths to reduce the confusion of similar names (six General Smiths!) and military unit designations; and he kept the pace lively. This battle was a full day of fighting all over the countryside, with frequent changes of location, and lots of advance and retreat. Ecelbarger handled this well, and made it possible if not easy to follow the tangled sequence of nearly simultaneous events. I ended up feeling that I can remember what happened in the battle and who did what, to at least a moderately detailed level. Ecelbarger writes from a somewhat northern-leaning perspective, perhaps because of fuller sources, but he shows tremendous sympathy for the soldiers on both sides of the lines both in their aspirations and their suffering.

There can never be enough maps, but the maps were fairly copious and helpful, though I would have liked a map for every fifteen minute segment of the battle. I will have to wait for Savas Beatie to put out one of their battle maps volumes. There is a full order of battle.

The best aspect of this book, aside, of course, from the information it imparts, is Ecelbarger's enthusiasm for his subject. On a personal note, I also like his enthusiasm for General Black Jack Logan, a favorite of mine from my old home town. But that enthusiasm can be expected: Ecelbarger wrote a biography of General Logan.

I must leave analysis of the accuracy of the book's content and of the validity of the author's viewpoints to the capable Civil War experts who are members of LibraryThing. ( )