Dennis W. Brandt is an independent scholar and author. He has researched the Civil War for more than two decades, concentrating on the human aspects of that conflict and the political and social events that led to it. Shattering the Truth is the most recent of three published works. One reviewer called his first book, From Home Guards to Heroes: The 87th Pennsylvania and its Civil War Community (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), "one of the most interesting and entertaining regimentals that I have encountered in quite some time" (Frank Piatek, Civil War News, Aug. 2007). Brandt's recently-released Pathway to Hell: A Tragedy of the American Civil War (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2008) is a unique and deeply-researched look into one Civil War soldier's struggle against the mental degradation that war so often inflicts upon participants. Brandt has been married to the same good-looking woman for forty years, has a son in the Army Reserves, and is "Pap-Pap" to two bright, lovely grandchildren.