Before buying this book, note the subtitle. It accurately describes the contents of the book. What you see is what you get. Note particularly that "the trip" covers the trip from Richmond to Danville, about 16 hours. It does not cover Davis's complete flight, which took about 3 weeks, though most of it (not including the capture) is discussed cursorily in an Appendix.

The author has an ax to grind, and grinds it down to the nub. His complaint is that the many historians and biographers of Davis's Flight have been negligent of their obligations to find out what really happened. He proceeds to deconstruct every history of the Flight, or biography or reminiscence or diary, that he could get his hands on. He finds them all wanting. His main charge is that later writers plagiarized secondary sources by earlier writers without verifying the facts. But instead of just copying, they copied with variations, many if not most of which they invented. Then their inventions were copied by still later writers. There have been, by the way, a lot of books written about the Flight.

That's the book in a nutshell, but this is not a short book. The author proves each of his assertions by quotes from each of the historians, showing in immense specificity how they copied each other or made things up. He analyzes each stage of the train journey down to the level of milepost. However, the train trip itself is only one of the topics dissected (see the subtitle). To my relief, the author does, in most sections, sift down to some conclusion about the most probable account.

This is a book for the compulsive. I read every page of it. It is often tedious, but often very humorous. The author has an acerbic wit which renders his criticisms entertaining. It is also a gold mine of Civil War trivia. ( )