A battle from the start : the life of Nathan Bedford Forrest /

The latest biography of the rough-hewn and gifted Confederate cavalry leader is somewhat academically oriented. Much space is devoted to putting Forrest in cultural context, as defined by reputable academics. Many readers may feel that not enough space is devoted to the man's career as one of the outstanding practitioners of mobile warfare in American history. Other readers may need more background on the general history of the Civil War than Wills affords in order to appreciate the actual combat narrative. Nonetheless, the book is readable, Forrest emerges as a complex though not entirely attractive human being, and the notes and bibliography will give serious students plenty to sink their teeth into. For most Civil War collections. ~--Roland Green

Wills, a history professor at Georgia Southern University, effectively synthesizes archival and other printed sources in this first modern biography of the Confederacy's greatest cavalry leader. The narrative approach employed reflects the subject's marginal literacy, which forces us to see Forrest (1821-1877) largely through the eyes of his contemporaries. He emerges as a product of the Southern frontier, a self-made man of limited vision, iron will and an ungovernable temper. Forrest, a onetime slave dealer, viewed blacks as commodities. This attitude shaped his wartime treatment of black POWs as property rather than men, and facilitated his central postwar role in the Ku Klux Klan. A master of tactical ruses and deceptions, Forrest led from the front; he killed as many as 30 men in personal combat. His raids and battles had a high nuisance value, but were never integrated into an overall strategy. They remained correspondingly sterile, the work of an unusually gifted amateur of war. Illustrations not seen by PW. History Book Club alternate. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

With his Civil War exploits the stuff of legend, Forrest's reputation as a Confederate military genius has long merited scholarly reappraisal, which Wills (Georgia Southern Univ.) provides in this exhaustively researched life. Driven to succeed, Forrest achieved military fame through unconventional thinking and bold action, although his reputation was tarnished by the slaughter of black soldiers following his victory at Fort Pillow. Wills shows that his subject followed self-interest in promoting both the welfare of black workers and the Ku Klux Klan's goals. Ironically, Forrest freed his slaves during the war and never acknowledged Klan affiliation. An authoritative work for Civil War and Southern history collections.-- Lawrence E. Ellis, Broward Community Coll. Lib., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Wills (History/Georgia Southern Univ.) superbly tells the story of one of the Confederacy's authentic military geniuses, the man who consistently ``got there first with the most men'' and bedeviled the Union armies in the West throughout the Civil War. Unlike other great Civil War generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-77) had little education and no formal military training. Instead, he was an enterprising frontiersman from the Tennessee and Mississippi backwoods whose many businesses included slave-trading. Wills shows, however, that Forrest was a born leader, one whom the southern code and way of life, with their emphasis on ``violence and honor,'' prepared for a military life. Wills also explains how Forrest, despite his humble origins, used his slave-trading business to become wealthy and to break into the planter class. When Tennessee voted to secede from the Union, Forrest's love of horses prompted him to organize his own cavalry regiment. Wills devotes the bulk of his account to Forrest's remarkable exploits during the Civil War--his daring escape with his command from the trap at Fort Donelson; his ``Streight bluff,'' which convinced Colonel Abel Streight to surrender nearly 1,500 Federals to only 400 Confederates; and his victory over a superior Federal force at Brice's Cross Roads. Wills also recounts the less savory aspects of Forrest's record, including the massacre of black Federal troops at Fort Pillow, and his postwar founding of the KKK. Although Forrest was unable to prevent Union victory in the West, Wills argues that the general was not simply a cavalry raider, but a commander whose battles had strategic importance. Ultimately, Wills concludes, Forrest was a blend of vice and virtue and a product of his times, ``neither the incarnation of evil his detractors have described...nor the paragon of Southern virtue some of his apologists have maintained.'' A well-written and meticulously researched biography that offers a balanced perspective on its controversial subject. (Sixteen pages of halftones--not seen.)