T. Harry Williams was a master of the written and spoken word. During his forty-year career, he wrote and edited significant books on important subjects, concentrating on civilian and military leadership in the Civil War and culminating in an assessment of Huey Long, Louisiana's controversial governor and senator of the Great Depression era. Williams's books have had a wide audience among general readers as well as scholars because he believed that the best historians focus on and analyze the past's prominent figures, the great men who led armies, governed nations, or controlled states.

Studying the lives of commanding leaders, Williams reached conclusions that were sometimes controversial. But his conclusions and theses were well reasoned, well argued, and above all written to help the reader "see" the people of the past as they moved toward triumph or disaster. Williams carefully crafted his books, combining substance, analysis, and style. Customary...