As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817-76) earned areputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, andfor losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoatfor the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy ofthe Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporarieshave continued to color assessments of the general's military career andcharacter by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments atface value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account ofBragg, the man and the officer.

While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizeshow his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and howthese reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimonyand opinions of other members of the Confederate army-includingBragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates-reveal howthe general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid theConfederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career,Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy andhumanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.