In nearly two dozen essays, the author deals with a wide variety of subjects from an accusation of peculation brought against 1st Lt. U.S. Grant while on duty in the northwest and Lincoln’s provision of a substitute, to the imprisonment of Jefferson Davis and the return of some Confederate banners to the South in the 1890s. Not all of the essays deal with amusing or trivial events, ones on the loss of the ironclad Monitor, Winfield Scott Hancock, and the Battle of the Crater being of considerable value to serious students of the war.