"What gives this narrative its unusual richness is the author's collation of hundreds of eyewitness accounts...The actions are described in the words, often picturesque and often eloquent, of those who were there, either as participants -- Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers -- in the fighting and destruction or as victims of Sherman's frank vow to 'make Georgia howl.' Mr. Davis intercuts these scenes with closeups of the chief actors in this nightmarish drama, and he also manages to give us a coherent historical account of the whole episode. A powerful illustration of the proposition put forth in Sherman's most famous remark." -- The New Yorker
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Background Information
General Sherman took the battle to the heart of the Confederacy when he marched his army through Georgia to the sea, inflicting the maximum destruction on the land as he passed through. William Tecumseh Sherman fought a war of destruction in Georgia, aimed at destroying the South's will and ability to fight. Georgia was the southernmost and last of the original thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard.