Customer Reviews

Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy's Last Hurrah : Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville

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In short, this is possibly the finest book regarding Hood's Nashville campaign. While some reviewers have taken issue with Sword's opinion of Hood's leadership, it should be noted that Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman shared Sword's opinion of Hood's leadership qualities.

Read this book to learn more about Patrick Cleburne, a man of greater ability, integrity and possibly devotion to the Southern cause than the man who sent him to his death.

Read this book to learn about the greatest charge of the Confederacy. The charge(s) at Franklin were greater in size, scope and ferocity than the fabled charge of Pickett at Gettysburg. And in some ways, filled with a more poignant courage. At Gettysburg, there was a still a chance perhaps for victory....at Franklin, there was only the chance of regaining a measure of pride for men who gave all they had for the noblest ideas of Southern Independence.

The book covers Franklin and Nashville better than any other book of the war. It shows the weakness of the Southern cause by this stage of the war and the weakness of General Hood. The book also show the courage of the Southern soilder and the men who led them.

Without a doubt the best contemporary, secondary source on the Middle Tennessee Campaign. Wiley Sword writes a splendid military history that reads like a novel.The book is written with excellent prose and an obvious love for the topic.Also of great use to the historian is that the book is well documented with the best use of primary material that one will find in a book of this genre. The use of manuscript material further embellishes this fine book. I highly recommend this book to all those interested in Civil War history!

Buy this book and you will have something in common with Confederate General John Bell Hood. You will both be victims of author Wiley Sword. The defenseless Hood is villianized by Sword's vicious, albeit eloquently written spin. Hood's critics are given top billing in Sword's pages, while Hood's many defenders are silenced. Statistics are twisted to make Hood's performance appear remarkably poor. Sword's fact-filtering, and cut-and-paste journalism will unfortunately impress the unwitting reader, who will be sixty bucks poorer, and totally misinformed on the 1864 Confederate campaign to liberate Nashville. John Bell Hood has been described as the Civil War's most "famously unfortunate" commander. Much more accurate and complete information on the campaign can be found within the pages of Shrouds of Glory, by Winston Groom, who doesn't try to create a villian where none existed.