William C. Davis, a native of Independence, Missouri, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Sonoma State University in northern California, then spent twenty years in editorial management in the magazine and book publishing industry, before leaving in 1990 to spend the next decade working as a writer and consultant here and abroad. He is the author or editor of more than sixty books in the fields of Civil War and Southern history, as well as numerous documentary screenplays. He was the on-camera senior consultant and commentator for 52 episodes of the Arts & Entertainment Network/History Channel series “Civil War Journal,” as well as a number of other productions on commercial and Public Television, and for the BBC, and has acted as historical consultant for several television and film productions, including “The Blue and the Gray,” “George Washington,” “The Perfect Tribute,” and 2015’s “Field of Lost Shoes” which was partially based on his book The Battle of New Market. In September 2013 he retired after thirteen years as Professor of History and Executive Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. He is the only four-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award given for book-length works in Confederate and Civil War History. His most recent book, The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863-1865, has just been published by University of North Carolina Press. In 2015 the Lincoln Forum named him recipient of the Richard Nelson Current Award and the Ulysses S. Grant Association gave him its John Y. Simon Award. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and serves on several other consultative bodies, and has been an occasional consultant to the Virginia State Police on cold case homicides.