Author Description

"Theodore Ayrault Dodge (1842-1909) was one of the nineteenth century's great military historians and author of biographies of Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon Bonaparte - classics that are still read and valued for their scholarship and style.". "But Dodge was anything but an "armchair" military historian. As a lieutenant colonel in the Army of the Potomac's 101st and later the 119th New York infantry regiments, he participated in the Civil War's fiercest and costliest fighting in the Seven Days' Battle and Second Bull Run, where he was wounded. At Chancellorsville, Dodge's regiment - surprised and routed by Stonewall Jackson's celebrated flanking manouver - found itself at the epicenter of the battle and subsequent controversy. Dodge's journal furnishes the best and most complete eyewitness account of the corps' ten-day experience marching and fighting. On the bloody field of Gettysburg, Dodge lost a leg and was temporarily taken prisoner.". "He kept an almost daily record of his service from June 1862 through July 1863, from the Peninsula Campaign to Gettysburg. Civil War historian Stephen W. Scars has edited Dodge's journal, offering a harrowing and vivid account of life - and death - in the Army of the Potomac during its most critical year."--BOOK JACKET.