Jonathan A. Noyalas is an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Civil War History at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Virginia, and the author or editor of seven books on Civil War, era history. Active in battlefield preservation, he serves on the board of directors of the Kernstown Battlefield Association and the committee on interpretation and education of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation. Professor Noyalas is currently serving as the Civil War historian for the historic resource study at Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park.

Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was known as the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy" due to its ample harvests and transportation centers, its role as an avenue of invasion into the North and its capacity to serve as a diversionary theater of war. The region became a magnet for both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, and nearly half of the thirteen major battles fought in the valley occurred as part of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. Civil War historian Jonathan A. Noyalas examines Jackson's Valley Campaign and how those victories brought hope to an infant Confederate nation, transformed the lives of the Shenandoah Valley's civilians and emerged as Stonewall Jackson's defining moment.