The Battle of Ezra Church was one of the deadliest engagements in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War and continues to be one of the least understood. Both official and unofficial reports failed to illuminate the true bloodshed of the conflict: one of every three engaged Confederates was killed or wounded, including four generals. Nor do those reports acknowledge the flaws--let alone the ultimate failure--of Confederate commander John Bell Hood's plan to thwart Union general William Tecumseh Sherman's southward advance.

In an account that refutes and improves upon all...