This new collection of previously published material celebrates Alan T. Nolan's life-long research and study of the Civil War. Included are essays on the Iron Brigade, Gettysburg, and leaders such as Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, John Gibbon, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Central to all of the essays is Nolan's admiration for the valor of the common soldier and his conviction that the War was neither romantic nor glorious, though its results--emancipation and the maintenance of the Union--were surely monumental.