Deep in the winter of 1862, on the border between Kentucky and
Tennessee, two extraordinary military leaders faced each other in an
epic clash that would transform them both and change the course of
American history forever. Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had no
significant military successes to his credit. He was barely clinging to
his position within the Union Army-he had been officially charged with
chronic drunkenness only days earlier, and his own troops despised him.
His opponent was as untested as he was: an obscure lieutenant colonel
named Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a slaveholder, Grant a closet
abolitionist-but the two men held one thing in common: an unrelenting
desire for victory at any cost. After ten days of horrific battle, Grant
emerged victorious. He had earned himself the nickname Unconditional
Surrender for his fierce prosecution of the campaign, and immediately
became a hero of the Union Army. Forrest retreated, but he soon
re-emerged as a fearsome war machine and guerrilla fighter. His
reputation as a brilliant and innovative general survives to this day.
But Grant had already changed the course of the Civil War. By opening
the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers to the Union Army, he had split
Dixie in two. The confederacy would never recover. A riveting account of
the making of two great military leaders, and two battles that
transformed America forever, Men of Fire is destined to become a
classic work of military history.