This short history (184 pages of text and illustrations, including a six page index) is short on Jackson’s youth and long on his experiences in the Civil War. It also includes his service in the Mexican War and his famed appointed to the Virginia Military Institute as an instructor. To put it mildly, he was as poor a teacher as he was an excellent officer during the Civil War.
The description of Jackson’s famed Valley Campaign is explained in this book as well as I have ever read and better than in most of the books I have read (I have read well more than 100 books on the topic). I found the illustrations to be solid and nothing more, but I remember staring at similar illustrations when I was a kid, coming back to them again and again, trying to absorb what people wore and carried back in those days.
Stonewall is Jean Fritz’s compelling account of the life of one of America’s most brilliant military heroes — General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Fritz masterfully combines tales of Jackson’s formative years, his eccentricities, and his passions with the harrowing history of the Civil War to give us a more personal, more sympathetic view of citizens of both the North and the South and the sacrifices they made for their country.
