2002 News Archive

Author E. Randall Floyd Brings "History & Hysteria" to Pensacola, FL

PENSACOLA – General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson might have been a hero to the Confederacy, but to his men this brooding, demon-haunted commander was the strangest man alive.

So says Georgia author E. Randall Floyd, a former professor who has penned a fascinating new book that examines the “dark side” of General Jackson and about
38 other movers and shakers in American history.

The Good, the Bad & the Mad: Weird People in American History (Harbor House, $19.95) goes where few books have gone before in showing that famous people like General George Armstrong Custer, Huey Long, Jane Addams, Cotton Mather and Major Henry Wirz suffered from more than just bad press.

“They were downright weird,” said Mr. Floyd, author of 13 other books, a nationally syndicated newspaper column and motion picture screenplays. “The history books have tried to present most of these people in a favorable light, but the truth is, they were seriously strange.”

Mr. Floyd will be in Pensacola in late June to discuss his new book, along with his nationally acclaimed Civil War novel, Deep in the Heart, which traces of the tortuous odyssey of a young Georgia foot soldier who fought alongside General Lee on the killing fields of Virginia.