Lincoln," by Bill O'Reilly. Excellent book, and it includes a mention of our own Dr. Robertson. JFK had named him to be the director of the newly formed Civil War Centennial Commission. After the assassination, Dr. Robertson was asked to research Abraham Lincoln's funeral in minute detail, because Jackie Kennedy asked that JFK's funeral mirror Lincoln's as much as possible.

I took only one of J.I. Robertson's Civil War classes, and was of course overwhelmed by his energy and his ability to bring the subject to life. Later, as Sports Editor and then Editor of The Collegiate Times, I interviewed him from time to time, and also interviewed him when I launched The Hokie Huddler to get him talking about his life as a college football official. He was a class act all around. I think his greatest written achievement is his exhaustive tome on Stonewall Jackson. Robertson was able to unearth original letters written by Stonewall that no other historian had found, and the results are remarkable. I'd highly recommend that book! Dr. Robertson came to Cincinnati (where I live) and gave a lecture at UC on his Stonewall Jackson work, and tears sprang to his eyes when he described finding an unassuming little box buried deep in a southern library, opening the lid, and seeing a stack of Jackson's personal and war-related letters. That man was all in on Civil War history!