Up on Peach Tree Creek

In terms of Atlanta Campaign battle books, it continues to amaze me how quickly we've gone from decades of next to nothing to, after only a few short years, the existence of competing (for lack of a better term) major works. Full length studies of Ezra Church from Gary Ecelbarger and Earl Hess were published only a year apart, and now Hess is applying his own inimitable touch to another major Atlanta battle. I had more than a few problems with the clunkiness and poor presentation of Robert Jenkins's 2014 study of Peach Tree Creek [see the review] but still appreciated its great strengths and found it more than worthy of recommendation. This coming September, Hess's The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta will be published by UNC Press.

From the description: "Offering new and definitive interpretations of the battle's place within the Atlanta campaign, Earl J. Hess describes how several Confederate regiments and brigades made a pretense of advancing but then stopped partway to the objective and took cover for the rest of the afternoon on July 20. Hess shows that morale played an unusually important role in determining the outcome at Peach Tree Creek—a soured mood among the Confederates and overwhelming confidence among the Federals spelled disaster for one side and victory for the other."

The proper spelling of the battle — 'Peach Tree Creek' over the more traditional 'Peachtree Creek' — is one obvious point of agreement between the two authors.