our next speaker is craig simons. craig was the retired professor and chairman of the history department at the united states naval academy. but he told me that his retirement failed. [laughs] [laughs] he was no good at it at all. so he is now the earnest jay king distinguished professor of maritime history at the united states naval war college in newport, rhode island. he has listen civil war. his book lincoln and his admiral s received the lincoln prize in 2009 and the abraham lincoln book award. he also has just done a biography of joe johnston and that s with the talk is about today. let s welcome craig simon. [applause] [applause] thank you everyone. good morning. i will start by putting our subject up on the screen here. here is old joe. i will happily acknowledge to this audience and the speakers who come before me that controversy and dispute hovered about the civil war careers of both ambrose burn side and don t carlos. i will also argue that few general officer
before becoming the south s most noted artillery office, hosted by the virginia historical society in richmond. confederate general edward porter alexander participated in all of the great battles of the western theater as well as fighting at tennessee in late 1863. alexander wrote two books which are still regarded by many scholars as the most influential of the personal accounts to come out of the civil war. in today s lecture our renowned speaker will assess alexander s books and how they continue to influence historians and other writers. dr. gary w. gallagher is the john now professor in history of the american civil war at the university of virginia and of course a very great friend to the virginia historical society. he s spoken her on several occasions and of course conducted research here in our rich holdings of civil war manuscripts. in fact, he was a member of the inaugural class of our melon fellowship practice back in 1988, and i won t tell you how old i was at
new york times book review. we recorded the program in september of 2018. good afternoon. welcome, everybody. i m david moskowitz, head of government relations and public policy at wells fargo and pleased to be here with you today. we are pleased to serve for the eighth year as a charter sponsor of the book festival and prouder to watch the book festival grow into the incredibly popular and impactful event it has become. i wouldn t be surprised [ applause ] thank you. wouldn t be surprised to see us move the needle on some best-seller list today. it s even more important to keep the book festival a free event that serves the community. the library of congress and the book festival s purpose here is literacy which leads to learning and opportunity which matches our goal of helping our community succeed, learning to love books and learning are what the book festival is all about. in this session, ron chernow will discuss his biography of ulysses grant f we re lucky, cert
state university. we are very grateful not only to have one of the mentors of kennesaw s tom scotto over here, but david parker is a good representative from my department. thank you, david, for coming. and thank you to all of you for being here, and thank you to our speaker for making it here. because we had actually planned for him to come to a different event some time ago and the weather got in the way. this time, the weather did not prevent him from arriving and we are so excited to have steve woodworth. stephen i do go steve and i do go a long way back. he taught for eight years at toccoa, so he has some good georgia roots in that area, and he went on to texas christian university, where he is the powerhouse. different people who say, who should i study with? he is one of the first names to come up for them and for me. one of my first books of steve s was jefferson davis as general. it wasn t an area that did not have his name associated with it. i picked of volume th
and the spotsville military park, he is now working as an interpreter in military programs at the colonialsburg foundation. he lives in williamsburg with his wife johanna, and please welcome we join me in welcoming ryan quint. well, thank you. how is everyone doing? yeah. everybody excited to be here? yeah. good. it would not be a great answer if you said no, because we are five minutes into the program. awesome to see you and great to see some not so familiar faces. i was so excited when the program was announced with the forgotten battles of the civil war. and so my book was in 2017 and then the question was what s next? at the time i worked at the s s slosingberg park. and so when you look into some of the battles the smaller they are, the easier they are to be forgott forgotten, and i then found dranesville that i have been working on and hope the make a book out of it. so, polling the audience. has anyone heard of the battle of dranesville? okay. second question, d