The Life of Billy Yank is a frank, intimate, and warm study of the Union soldier by one of the most prolific and revered of all Civil War historians. Here, through excerpts from wartime letters and diaries and from other carefully documented research, Bell Irvin Wiley presents an absorbing account of the small and sometimes moving events that made up the daily life of the common Union soldier, a moral but fallible human who could laugh at lewd jokes, be stripped of his courage under fire, or save an entire company from certain death.

Bell Irvin Wiley (1906--1980) was a professor emeritus of history at Emory University and one of America's preeminent Civil War historians.

James I. Robertson, Jr. is the author of many books, including the award-winning Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend. Well known for his lectures across the country and his appearances in television documentaries, he is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Tech.