This is a biography of Ambrose Bierce who discovered in the Civil War a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next 50 years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals. [Morris] resists oversimplified or fashionable answers to complex questions posed by Bierce's life, but always entertains the reader with his own forceful and precise writing...likely to rank among the notable biographies of the year.