Books

I just finished Richard McMurry’s “John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence.”
The book was originally published in 1982, but for many Civil War enthusiasts this look at Hood will still seem fresh and intriguing.
McMurry is no apologist for Hood. He recognizes the Kentuckian’s many faults and discusses them in detail. But he also takes issue with many of the common, though unfounded, perceptions of Hood held by many.
For instance, McMurry points out the series of crucial mistakes made by Hood on his campaign in Tennessee, but also examines more closely, and more reasonably, Hood’s reasons for striking north.
McMurry finds plenty of fault with both Hood and Gen. Joseph Johnston, who Hood replaced at the gates of Atlanta.
McMurry does a very good job describing the “dance of death” through North Georgia between Johnston and Sherman. Strangely, for a book about Hood, the author isn’t nearly as good describing the chess match between Hood and Sherman in the days right after the fall of Atlanta. Sherman disappears from the story for too long as Hood wavers on what curse to pursue with his beaten but still dangerous army.
The battles of Franklin and Nashville are dispensed with quickly, as if the author was uncomfortable recounting the destruction of the Army of Tennessee. I also wish McMurry had written more on the performance of the Texas Brigade during and after Hood’s wounding at Gettysburg.
Complaints logged, I strongly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the Georgia-Tennessee theater of operations. To understand the calamity that befell the Confederacy’s second largest army, you have to understand John Bell Hood. McMurry’s book is a huge help in that regard.