A Summer of Battles, The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign: Volume 1 The Siege of Atlanta, Utoy Creek and The Grand Movement Paperback – October 31, 2025

The Civil War is one of the most significant events in United States history. The Atlanta Campaign is one of the most significant events in the Civil War because it won President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election and thus enabled him to prosecute the war through to the ultimate Federal victory over the Confederacy.While the Atlanta Campaign has attracted the attention of more historians in recent years, the campaign’s critical final weeks have not been adequately explored. A Summer of Battles fills this void, focusing on the 40-day period following the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864, until General William T. Sherman’s army occupied Atlanta in early September.Volume 1 covers August 1864, when the Northern and Southern armies faced off along 15 miles of earthworks and trenches north and west of Atlanta. Volume 1 also takes a close look at the under-studied fighting in the Utoy Creek area southwest of Atlanta, including the Battle of Utoy Creek on August 6, 1864. And it follows the evolution of General Sherman’s reluctant decision to make The Grand Movement. This remarkable military accomplishment has been overlooked because it was almost immediately overshadowed by the climactic capture of Atlanta.A Summer of Battles presents a wealth of first-hand accounts from soldiers in a day-to-day timeline that will help readers understand the remarkable events that took place on the north, west and south sides of Atlanta in the late summer of 1864. Appendices document some of the terrible human costs of the final weeks of fighting among soldiers and their families, an important topic often ignored in other works focused on the highest levels of command.Author David Allison is a life-long student of the Civil War who grew up in Atlanta and has lived there more than 60 years. In 2018 he published the book “Attacked On All Sides” about the battle of Decatur, Georgia, a sideshow of the epic Battle of Atlanta fought east of the city on July 22, 1864. He then began to explore war-time events on the west side and south side of Atlanta and became intimately acquainted with many of the surviving battlegrounds, discovering a wealth of dramatic first-hand stories overlooked in other histories. These are now gathered and presented in A Summer of Battles. Read more