Like the great city sieges of history—Berlin, Stalingrad, Sarajevo—the fall of Atlanta, the prime urban center of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, was a historical instance of the tragedy of war overtaking civilian innocents.

The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history—it was the centerpiece of the hugely successful book and movie Gone with the Wind. But though the epic sieges of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Berlin have all been explored in best-selling histories, the one great American example has been treated only cursorily as a footnote. Marc Wortman remedies that conspicuous absence in grand fashion with The Bonfire, an absorbing narrative history told through the points of view of key participants, both Confederate and Union.

MARC WORTMAN is the author of The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power. An award-winning freelance writer, his work has appeared in numerous national magazines. He has taught literature and writing at Princeton University and was a senior editor of the Yale alumni magazine. He lives in New Haven with his wife, daughter, and son.