Good evening.

I didn't have a worst book this year, but I would offer that the one I least enjoyed was the Confederacy's Last Hurrah by Wiley Sword.

It was an amazing book in many ways, illustrating again the horror of warfare.

See also Rick Atkinson's The Day of Battle, The Victors by Stephen Ambrose and The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, just to name a few.

Swords book was a real slog.

Too many battles and too many generals.

I finally set myself a schedule to force myself to read 20 plus pages each day but I was glad to have finished and read this important book, important enough that I wanted to share it with you.

Sword was born on December 7th, 1937, and he passed on November 9th, 2015.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Sword spent six decades amassing one of the nation's most extensive private collections of Civil War memorabilia.

He was an award winning author and historian.

His book The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790 to 1795, was nominated for the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Western Heritage Prizes.

Embrace an Angry Wind The Confederacy's Last Hurrah - Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville was originally published by Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

in 1992.

The book I read was published by the University Press of Kansas by arrangement with Harper Collins.

In it, Sword provides detailed information about the Confederacy' invasion of Tennessee in 1864.

According to Sword, the invasion of Tennessee in the winter of 1864 may have been the dramatic pinnacle of the American Civil War.

The destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee became the real basis for the demise of the Southern Confederacy.

As I noted earlier there are lots of military men in this book, but I think it is fair to say that it revolves around general John Bell Hood of the Confederacy.

He was the so of a prosperous Kentucky doctor, and he grew up in the lush Bluegrass region near Mount Sterling, Kentucky.

He graduated from West Point with the class of 1853, accumulating in his senior year, 196 demerits, four short of expulsion.

A successful military career did follow, and it was with this military man that the Confederacy placed responsibility for this last ditch effort.

Swords book provides an extremely detailed look at this last and last ditch campaign of the Confederacy and the people who strategized it, and those who were required to execute it.

Is a book about military strategy, heroism, sacrifice, and epic mistakes caused by egos, misinformation, weather, the fates.

It is also a book tha squarely illustrates the carnage and seeming senselessness of warfare whether primitive or high tech.

Reading about men being force to march over muddy and frozen roads, sometime without shoes or warm clothing, sometimes without sleep, food, water and without adequate ammunition, and then being ordered to run into artillery, bullets and bayonets is importan but difficult reading and Sword provides graphic details in these regards.

Towards the end of the book, Sword writes: ‘The legacy of the Arm of Tennessee was both the ardent pride and enduring passion of its soldiers.

Under some of the worst comba commanders to serve in the war, the army had fought and suffered as few others.

Despite the final crushing defeats, its efficacy had been measured not in battles won or lost, but in its intense fighting qualities.

As I noted at the beginning, this was a difficult read, but I am glad that I did.

If you are interested i the Civil War, military history and military strategy and or American history, I think you will find it worth of investment of time spent with the Confederacy's Last Hurrah.

I found it a very important and thoughtful book.

Goodnight and see you next time.

And let me hear from you.

I would greatly appreciate your input on our show.