I was born in Ohio, raised in Illinois (mostly), and graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1982 with a B.A. in history. Thereafter I studied one year at the University of Hamburg, in Germany, before beginning studies at Rice University, where I received a Ph.D. in 1987. From 1987 to 1997 I taught at Bartlesville Wesleyan College in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and at Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa Falls, Georgia. At both institutions I was more or less the entire history department and taught everything from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe and the United States. In 1997 I came to TCU, where I teach courses in U.S. history as well as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Old South. My main field of specialization is the Civil War. My publications include Jefferson Davis and His Generals (University Press of Kansas, 1990), Davis and Lee at War (University Press of Kansas, 1995), Leadership and Command in the American Civil War (Savas Woodbury, 1996), The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (Greenwood, 1996), A Deep Steady Thunder (McWhiney Foundation, 1996), Six Armies in Tennessee (1998), The Musick of the Mocking Birds, The Roar of the Cannon (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), The Art of Command in the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), Civil War Generals in Defeat (University Press of Kansas, 1999), This Grand Spectacle (McWhiney Foundation, 1999), Chickamauga: A Battlefield Guide (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), No Band of Brothers (University of Missouri Press, 1999), The Human Tradition in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Scholarly Resources, 2000), Cultures in Conflict (Greenwood, 2000), Grant's Lieutenants from Cairo to Vicksburg (University Press of Kansas, 2001), While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (University Press of Kansas, 2001), Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), The Oxford Atlas of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2004), Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), and Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). I'm currently working on several projects, including an overview of the Civil War west of the Appalachians, a Civil War textbook, and a book on the 1840s.