The author bought a house in Ohio that had been raided by Morgan, which got him interested in the raid. He researched and collected eye-witness accounts and then wrote EVERYTHING into this book. It goes on and on, often veering off into odd tangents and lists of names. But it also includes enough anecdotes to make it worth reading. It could use some editing and proofreading—the very first sentence contains a major grammatical error—but I've read worse.

As for the raid itself, Morgan's men were, for the most part, careful not to harm civilians except financially. They raided stores and some homes, but at other times were very polite. The raid itself accomplished little except to distract some Union troops. It is credited with delaying the Union movement into eastern Tennessee, which led to the battle of Chickamauga. Had the Confederacy not won that battle, the war might have ended sooner, but considering the outcome of the war and the amount of destruction visited on the South, that hardly seems to me to be a plus.