REVIEWS:

Courage Under Fire: Profiles in Bravery from the Battlefields of the Civil War. How far will an author or historian go to build a career? To what extremes will he or she go for riches, respect and notoriety? Is professional success so important that honesty, character and decency should be compromised? Celebrated Civil War author Wiley Sword has built a career by compromising historical integrity and basic human decency in besmirching the honorable legacy of Confederate General John Bell Hood. Astonishingly, in a book on the subject of courage, Sword elects to include an essay on Gen. John Bell Hood that has nothing to do with Hood’s renowned personal courage in a series of battles that ultimately cost him his left arm and right leg on the bloody killing fields of Gettysburg and Chickamauga. Rather, Sword clumsily attempts to tie his malicious essay on Hood into the book’s primary theme by entitling the Hood essay with the rhetorical question “What Kind of Courage?” In the essay, Sword offers a preachy pontification about Hood’s lack of “moral courage.” As Sword did in his acclaimed 1991 book, Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, in his latest effort he engages in an unholy crusade against Gen. Hood, filtering from historical records any and all documented evidence that does not support his biased, agenda-based premise. In both books Sword misinforms readers by mischaracterizing the words and actions of both Gen. Hood and other prominent historical characters, and shamelessly censors all memoirists whose testimony does not support Sword’s prejudicial assertions. READ OUR REVIEW.

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The Confederacy's Last Hurrah. Celebrated Civil War author Wiley Sword describes Confederate General John Bell Hood's post-war memoir, Advance and Retreat, as full of "distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications." This is a more accurate description of Sword’s own book than Hood's. Sword's Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy's Last Hurrah is unfortunately an ultra-subjective and unbalanced work that will mesmerize unwitting readers with its credible style and tone. Sword's exhaustive research, intellect and gifted writing style could have served Civil War history with the most thorough analysis and presentation ever written on General Hood’s ill-fated 1864 Tennessee Campaign. Sadly, though, Sword resorts to hyperbole, concealment and fact filtering to portray Hood as a blundering, ignorant, vindictive and even murderous character. Throughout Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy's Last Hurrah, Sword selectively includes opinions, statistics and quotes only from sources critical of Hood, while frequently censoring Hood’s supporters. Sword rarely refers to sources that comment favorably on Hood, and on those rare occasions, questions their accuracy and credibility. However, most disturbing is the existence of major factual errors germane to critical issues of Hood's decisions during the campaign – inaccuracies so glaring that they seem to suggest intentional misrepresentation by Sword. READ OUR REVIEW.