Shrouds of Glory is written by Winston Groom. $23.00, hardcover, 0-87113-591-4, 308 pages, 6x9, maps, photos, 1995.

The name Winston Groom will be familiar to many as the author of Forrest Gump, the book that was made into the enormously popular movie. Groom has generally written fiction in the past, but explains in the preface to this historical work how he came to be interested in the last campaign of the Army of Tennessee. Groom's great-grandfather was a veteran of that army and Groom's discovery of a box of his ancestor's papers provided the catalyst that launched him on this project.

Shrouds of Glory is mainly concerned with the Army of Tennessee under the leadership of John Bell Hood, culminating in the disastrous battles of Franklin and Nashville in late 1864. Interwoven with that tightly paced narrative is a general background of the American Civil War to that point, the Confederate Army of Tennessee's history and that of its adversaries and enlightening sketches of many of the leaders on both sides.

Hood, however, is the main character and Groom documents the tragedy of the man, which also became the Army of Tennessee's tragedy. The destruction of that army on this campaign has provided many of the Civil War's what if's and lingering mysteries and Groom explores them all as he provides the day-by-day story of the campaign itself.

Groom used all the usual sources in compiling this book, as well as some other much-neglected material. Personal accounts by survivors and witnesses to the campaign and its battles, for example, were drawn from "The Confederate Veteran," a magazine published in Nashville between 1893 and 1933. Some of those accounts provide the most insightful and excruciating anecdotes that fill this work.

The maps, both on endpaper and in the text, provide thorough context for the tale Groom has to tell. It's easy to keep up with the movements of individual units because of the maps. The photos, many of them not widely published previously, add yet another dimension of understanding.

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