Book excerpt: This amazing story of bloody guerilla warfare along the Kentucky-Tennessee border presents a tale and a protagonist unique in the annals of the Civil War. When the Civil War began in 1861, the men of the Cumberland Mountain districts chose sides and pursued a private war with each other. The most infamous of their number was Champ Ferguson. In this classic study, Thurman Sensing provides the only available book-length account of Ferguson's brutal deeds, his capture, his trial, his execution at the end of the war, and the legendary ruse by which he allegedly escaped hanging. Long regarded as a collector's item by Civil War buffs, the reappearance of this book in a paperback edition will be welcomed by many.