Memoirs of General William T. Sherman

Few Union commanders were as hated in the South, or as widely read afterward, as the man who wrote this book. Sherman covers his whole life: a boyhood in Ohio, army service in California during the Gold Rush, a stint as a banker and then as head of a military college in Louisiana, and finally the war that made his name. He is blunt about Shiloh, Vicksburg, the Atlanta campaign, and the march to the sea, quoting his own orders and correspondence at length rather than softening them for posterity. The prose is plain, occasionally score-settling, and unusually candid about how badly things went before they went well. Historians still argue over it. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.