Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War's Most-Told Stories
English | November 1st, 2021 | ISBN: 081173997X | 264 pages | True EPUB | 5.73 MB

In the spirit of Robert Adair's cult classic The Physics of Baseball, here is a book that tackles the long-cherished myths of Civil War history-and ultimately shatters them, based on physics and mathematics. At what range was a Civil War sniper lethal? Did bullets ever "rain like hail"? Could one ever step across a battlefield by stepping only on bodies and never hard ground? How effective were Civil War muskets and rifles? How accurate are photographs and paintings?

In this genre-bending work of history, Scott Hippensteel puts the tropes of Civil War history under the microscope and says, "Wait a minute!" Combining science and history, Hippensteel reexamines much that we hold dear about the Civil War and convincingly argues that memoirs and histories have gotten it wrong.

This is a work of history and science for our era of "fake news"-and for well beyond. Readers will never look at the Civil War the same way again.