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"Behind us lay Atlanta smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a ball over the ruined city." -General William T. Sherman

 

For most Americans, Atlanta blazed most memorably in Gone With The Wind, but the real-life Civil War siege and destruction of the Georgia city possessed far more drama and lasting significance than can be witnessed in any single movie or bestselling novel. Carefully written and adeptly written, Marc Wortman's narrative history of the "hundred days' battle" and the double burning of Atlanta presents its still controversial events from the points of view of their participants, albeit victors or victims; generals or slaves. Like the conflagration itself, The Bonfire cuts through to the marrow of experience. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson writes, "Marc Wortman's vivid narrative proves that war is indeed hell."