"The field artillery's story is a dramatic one, filled with individual heroes and bumbling commanders, with gallant stands and crushing victories. Military historian, VanLoan Naisawald, a former artillery officer ... re-creates the color and excitement of these battles, using the original battle histories and following specific battalions into the very heart of combat ... In describing the different types of weapons used and explaining the army's method of handling them, Mr. Naisawald ... shows what the guns of the period could do. He traces the development of the concept of massed division attack and artillery corps battles following Gettysburg and are still being used in modern tactical warfare. Out of the grape shot and canister shells that proved so effective for Northern troops during the Civil War evolved the fighting artillery of World War I and World War II"--Jacket.

That was the end of us : First Bull Run -- An Army is born -- A practice battle : Williamsburg -- We were not expecting so severe a battle : Seven Pines and Fair Oaks -- Heroic and grand slaughter : Mechanicsville and Gaines Mill -- A swamp and a farm : White Oak Swamp and Frayser's Farm (Glendale) -- It was not war, it was murder : Malvern Hill -- Experiment on those fellows over there : Second Bull Run -- Sharpsburg was artillery hell : Antietam -- There goes Battery B to hell : Fredericksburg -- I can't make ammunition : Chancellorsville -- An artilleryman has to fight : Gettysburg, first day -- Don't let them take my guns away : Gettysburg, second day -- The biggest humbug of the season : Gettysburg, third day -- Limbers and caissons, pass your pieces! : Fall operations, 1863 -- Send no more artillery : Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor -- The saddest affair I have witnessed in the war : Petersburg to the end.