Rebel Yell

Starred review from July 21, 2014
Journalist Gwynne follows his bestselling Empire of the Summer Moon with a stimulating study of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Jackson today remains a figure of almost mythical proportions and embodies the more heroic elements of the Southern cause. Gwynne, in a primarily chronological narrative, reveals him to have been an early master of modern mobile warfare and a clear-eyed interpreter of what modern “pitiless war was all about.” In 1861, Jackson was “part of that great undifferentiated mass of second-rate humanity who weren’t going anywhere in life.” But underneath his efflorescent eccentricities, he was “highly perceptive and exquisitely sensitive,” as well as an “incisive and articulate observer.” In the spring of 1862 those qualities shaped the brilliant Shenandoah Valley campaign that reinvigorated a stagnant Confederate war effort and established him as the “most famous military figure in the Western world.” Exhaustion limited Jackson’s contributions to the Peninsular Campaign, but from Second Bull Run through Antietam to his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, his achievements and his legend grew. Gwynne tells Jackson’s story without editorializing and readers are likely to agree that, without Jackson, Lee “would never again be quite so brilliant,” while even in the North Jackson was considered, rather than a rebel, a “gentleman and... fundamentally an American.” Maps and 16-page photo insert.

Starred review from September 1, 2014
Dispensing with a chronological march through the life of Confederate General Thomas Jackson, Gwynne presents Jackson's eccentric personality in biographical episodes that he injects into the arc of Jackson's Civil War campaigns and battles. For example, the book covers the future hero's boyhood and his 1850s tenure at the Virginia Military Institute (a rich source of anecdotes of Jackson's oddities) after the 1861 Battle of Bull Run. Gwynne's technique succeeds, thanks to his spry prose and cogent insight, in revealing Jackson's character. Describing him as shy, serious, determined, and profoundly religious, Gwynne captures the stiff, asocial persona Jackson presented to the world. Yet Jackson did exhibit warmer traits in female company, evidenced by Gwynne' quotations of surviving letters, though those don't reveal his feelings about his estrangement from his Unionist sister, Laura. Better known is Jackson's inflexible attitude toward military duty and, most important to history, his tactical and strategic command of warfare. Showing Jackson's exploitation of speed and deception, Gwynne's vivid account of his Civil War run, which ended with his death in the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, is a riveting, cover-to-cover read for history buffs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)