The first essay I read in Garrison's book was on the Battle of Franklin, and I decided not to waste my time on the others.

In the very first sentence of the Franklin essay Garrison makes the first of numerous factual errors when he states that the Confederate commander John Bell Hood was a major general. Four months before the Battle of Franklin Hood was promoted from the rank of lieutenant general to the temporary rank of full general. Hood had not been a major general since Chickamauga, a full year earlier.

On the very first page of the essay Garrison states that after the Battle of Franklin Hood proceeded to Nashville with an army of only 19,000 men. In fact the troop strength of Hood's army was 31,500 when he marched on Nashville.

Still on the first page Garrison parrots the myth that Hood used laudanum...an outrageous assertion that has been universally discredited by virtually every Civil War scholar.

The factual errors in Garrison's short essay on Franklin are simply too numerous to detail here.

His outrageously ignorant analyses and commentary add to the pain in reading this headache-inducing essay.

A better title for this book would be Strange Books of the Civil War, or A Strange Decision by a Civil War Book Publisher.

I found this work to be a little disappointing. Each story seemed to develope slowly and was just not exiciting or interesting. Maybe to someone just beginning to read about this war, it might hold some interest, but not in my case.