The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta
About this audiobook
The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history. But this epic siege on American soil has been treated only cursorily by historians. Marc Wortman grandly remedies this situation with The Bonfire, an absorbing narrative history told through the points of view of key participants both Confederate and Union.
The Bonfire reveals an Atlanta of unexpected paradoxes: a new mercantile city dependent on the primitive institution of slavery, governed by a pro-Union mayor. When James Calhoun surrendered the city after forty-five terrible days, he was accompanied by Bob Yancey, a black slave who was likely the son of Union advocate Daniel Webster. Atlanta was both the last of the medieval city sieges and the first modern urban devastation. From its ashes, a new South would arise.
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About the author
Marc Wortman is an independent historian and award-winning freelance journalist. His books include 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War, The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta, and The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power. Marc Wortman is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines.
Anthony Heald, an Audie Award–winning narrator, has earned Tony nominations and an Obie Award for his theater work; appeared in television’s Law & Order, The X-Files, Miami Vice, and Boston Public; and starred as Dr. Frederick Chilton in the 1991 Oscar-winning film The Silence of the Lambs. He has also won numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards for his narrations.
