Description: Challenges the longstanding view that the rifle musket revolutionized warfare during the Civil War, arguing instead that its actual impact was real but limited and specialized.
Brief description: Earl J. Hess holds the Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University and has published ten previous books on the Civil War, including The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat, also from Kansas, and, most recently, Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign.
Review Quotes:
"Hess hits a bull's-eye with this fresh, provocative book."--Daniel Sutherland, author of Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861-1865
"A most welcome, meticulous, important, and easy-to-read addition to the literature."--Paddy Griffith, author of Battle Tactics of the Civil War
"Should be required reading, not just for students of the U.S. Civil War, but for anyone interested in the history of warfare."--Mark Grimsley, author of And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864
"A landmark study."--William C. Davis, author of The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy