The Atlanta Campaign: Seven Things You Should Know

Sherman didn't burn Atlanta the day he took it. He didn't capture it in one battle, either.The real story of the Atlanta Campaign is stranger and more interesting than the popular version. It ran for four months, not one dramatic afternoon. It was decided as much by a railroad running back to Nashville as by any battlefield. It featured a Confederate general who might have been winning by losing, a change of command that made everything worse, and a burning city whose fall landed at the exact moment it could save a presidential election.The Atlanta Campaign: Seven Things You Should Know covers the four-month fight for the Confederacy's most important railroad junction - why Sherman fought a war of maneuver instead of pitched battles, the one day he broke his own rule and paid dearly for it, the general fired at the very moment his own plan might have worked, and how the fall of a Georgia city in September 1864 helped reshape a Union election two months later.The seven things: - Atlanta Was a Railroad Hub, Not a Symbol- The Campaign Took Four Months, Not One Battle- The Railroad Was the Real Battlefield- Johnston Was Winning by Losing- Kennesaw Mountain Was Sherman's Only Mistake- Replacing Johnston Made It Worse- Atlanta's Fall Saved an ElectionPlus a bonus chapter untangling the two separate fires that history - and one very famous movie - have folded into a single, inaccurate image of "the burning of Atlanta."Part of the I'm No Expert, But series: short, accurate, accessible books on surprising topics. Readable in under an hour. The kind of book that leaves you thinking: I'm glad I know that now.