His fellow soldiers called him "Uncle Billy." To them, William Tecumseh Sherman was a general who cared deeply about them and who understood that war was a dirty but necessary job--as he famously said, "War is hell." Eschewing a chronological approach, Robert L. O'Connell (The Ghosts of Cannae) breaks Sherman's life down into three parts, each revealing different aspects of his personality: the military strategist, the general and the human being.
Sherman seemed to possess a "warlike wizardry," with an innate sense of geography; he could instantly memorize any piece of land and knew where to fight and where not to. After graduating from West Point as a second lieutenant, he got his first taste of combat fighting in Florida's Second Seminole War. He pored over available maps better to understand the local topography and thus employed his troops more efficiently; he did his job well and was promoted to first lieutenant. Thereafter he was posted to a variety of places around the country, and then the Civil War broke out. He took Secession personally and fought fiercely, relentlessly driving the Confederates back in Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, leaving scorched land behind.
As an officer, he demonstrated how to adapt and how to command a mostly ragged army of volunteers. As a man, he loved crowds and ceremonies, the theater, talk and women. Unlike his friend Ulysses S. Grant, Sherman hated politics; he preferred soldiering. O'Connell's lively narrative shows us Sherman as a brilliant and flawed man, a professional solder and no saint. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher