Throughout his life, Atlanta resident George W. Wray Jr. (1936 2004) built a collection of more than six hundred of the rarest Confederate artifacts including not just firearms and edged weapons but also flags, uniforms, and accoutrements. Today, Wray s collection forms an integral part of the Atlanta History Center s holdings of some eleven thousand Civil War artifacts. "Confederate Odyssey" tells the story of the Civil War through the Wray Collection. Analyzing the collection as material evidence, Gordon L. Jones demonstrates how a slave-based economy on the cusp of industrialization...