by Burke Davis. Rinehart & Company. 480 pp. $5.

For more than half a century, Colonel G. F. R. Henderson’s life of Stonewall Jackson has been a classic of Civil War literature, and Mr. Davis’s readable book does not assume to dislodge the earlier work from its place. It has merits of its own to stand upon, however —a fresh perspective gained from the broader knowledge and understanding of the War which have developed during the last generation or so, plus a good deal of information about Jackson’s pre-war career which was not available to the British writer. Old Stonewall appears here with all of his remarkable eccentricities and his even more remarkable speed and ferocity in battle, and the book seems likely to gain wide popularity.