It has 969 reviews on Amazon alone, eighty-two percent of which are five stars and thirteen percent, four stars. With good reason. While long (689 pages) S. C. Gwynne's biography on Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson is an excellent read.
Rebel Yell covers the life of Thomas Jackson in five parts: The Unimagined War; The Man Within the Man; Valley of the Shadow of Death; Stirring of a Legend, and All that is Ever Given to a Man. Within these sections, the author does a great job of laying out the circumstances that made Jackson who he was, and of portraying the quirky, often maddening VMI instructor his students knew and the more relaxed Jackson friends and family enjoyed.
Descriptions of various battles slowed down my reading a bit. I tried to skim over these sections, but I typically came upon details that compelled me to backup and read what I'd missed. In doing so, I found within these chapters as well as between them, Gywnne did an excellent job of comparing and contrasting Jackson with
commanders on both sides of the conflict. It was easy to see why the brilliant
soldier who became an international figure was respected by many on both
sides of the war, and why even some in the North mourned his death.
An excellent book, and far more objective and balanced than
Robert Dabney’s biography on his hero.
