Box upstairs and read it and go, holy cow you dont have holy cow experiences often, but when they come, its really a thrill for researchers, and that keeps us going. This book exists today because i gave in to one of those deep dark desires that lurks in the depths of the human soul. I refer to the desire to prove that your boss is full of bolonga. This happened in 2010. I was hired as a editor at American History magazine, and i immediately made a suggestion to the honcho of the place who just hired me. I said, the 150th anniversary of the civil war is coming up. Why dont we take a couple pages in each issue and run a newspaper story about some event in the civil war that happened 150 years ago. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Apparently, he didnt. He said, well, that would be a good idea, but civil war journalism was really lousy. I thought to myself, you know, i used to be a reporter, and i couldnt imagine that all the reporters covering the civil war had somehow missed the big