Theodore Ayrault Dodge was the paramount American military historian of the nineteenth century and an unparalleled biographer of some of history's greatest commanders and generals. Dodge fought in the Union Army in some of the Civil War's fiercest and costliest engagements, until he lost his right leg at Gettysburg. These experiences provided him with insights on the realities of warfare that are sometimes lacking in the work of purely academic or "armchair" military historians.