Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher

The only comprehensive account of the Battle of Fort Fisher and the basis for the television documentary Confederate Goliath, Rod Gragg’s award-winning book chronicles in detail one of the most dramatic events of the American Civil War. Known as "the Gibraltar of the South," Fort Fisher was the largest, most formidable coastal fortification in the Confederacy, by late 1864 protecting its lone remaining seaport—Wilmington, North Carolina. Gragg’s powerful, fast-paced narrative recounts the military actions, political maneuvering, and personality clashes involved in this unprecedented land and sea battle. It vividly describes the greatest naval bombardment of the war and shows how the fort’s capture in January 1865 hastened the South’s surrender three months later. In his foreword, Civil War historian Edward G. Longacre surveys Gragg’s work in the context of Civil War history and literature, citing Confederate Goliath as "the finest book-length account of a significant but largely forgotten episode in our nation’s most critical conflict."

AUTHOR BIO: Rod Gragg is the author or editor of fourteen books on American history, including The Declaration of Independence: Forging of a Nation; Lewis and Clark: On the Trail of Discovery; From Fields of Fire and Glory: Letters Home from the Civil War; Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at Gettysburg, winner of the James I. Robertson Jr. Award; and The Illustrated Confederate Reader, winner of the Douglas Southall Freeman Award for History. A former journalist, he is an adjunct professor of history at Coastal Carolina University and lives with his family in Conway, South Carolina.