On Sunday, October 12th at 3 P.M., the Franklin Civil War Round Table will host Dr. Brian Steel Wills, Director of the Center for the Study of the Civil War Era and Professor of History at Kennesaw University in Georgia, who will present “Improbable Civil Warriors: Forrest and Thomas.”
Dr. Wills has written extensively on the Civil War and his works include: The River was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow (University of Oklahoma Press), Confederate General William Dorsey Pender: The Hope of Glory (Louisiana State University Press), and George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel (University Press of Kansas), which was the recipient of the 2013 Richard Barksdale Harwell Award for the best book on a Civil War topic for the year 2012 presented by the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta.
His biography of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, A Battle From the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as both a History Book Club selection and a Book of the Month Club selection.
In 2000, Dr. Wills received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of eleven recipients from all faculty members at public and private institutions across the state. He was named Kenneth Asbury Professor of History and won both the Teaching award and the Research and Publication award from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He currently serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of the Civil War Era at Kennesaw State University