The charismatic Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, who began his military career in the Mexican War, earned his great fame in the Civil War in a series of brilliantly fought battles. He was given the name Stonewall at the First Battle of Bull Run, when his brigade faced overwhelming odds but held the line. Byron Farwell's engrossing narrative reveals Stonewall Jackson both as a military genius and as a quirky, dark personality radically different from the storybook version that grew up after Jackson's untimely death at Chancellorsville in 1863.