Introduction / Kent T. Dollar and Larry H. Whiteaker
Part I. Battles, skirmishes, and soldiers
The militia spirit: Lexington and Clarksville militias and the making of Civil War armies / Aaron Astor
Descent into anarchy: the evolution of irregular warfare in the lower Green River country of Kentucky / Scott A. Tarnowieckyi
The 1861 campaign to liberate East Tennessee / Michael Toomey
Guerrilla warfare and federal occupation in the Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky, 1862-1864 / Patricia A. Hoskins
Our friends, the enemy: federal occupation and the unionist regiments of middle and west Tennessee / Derek W. Frisby
Franklin: the thunder drum of war / Wiley Sword
Part II. Leaders
Reconsidering Felix Zollicoffer: the influence of weather and terrain in the rise and fall of a military commander in Appalachia / Brian D. McKnight
Don Carlos Buell: misunderstood commander of the west / Stephen D. Engle
Braxton Bragg and the Stones River Campaign / Earl J. Hess
Mutual antagonists: Braxton Bragg, Frank Cheatham, and the Army of Tennessee / Christopher Losson
Grant and Forrest: the command value of calluses / Jack Hurst
"A fighting governor": Isham G. Harris and the Army of Tennessee / Sam Davis Elliott
Revisiting the heartland from war to reconstruction: an afterword / Benjamin Franklin Cooling.