During the Civil War, the legendary “Fighting McCooks” were familiar to most Americans. Time and the tempestuous twentieth century swept Ohio’s famous fighting family into a twilight of obscurity. Now the true story of this remarkable Scotch-Irish family is finally seeing the bright light of day. And what a story it is!

          In 1790 when George McCook emigrated from Northern Ireland and settled in the Ohio Valley, little did he know that when Civil War erupted in 1861, his three sons and fourteen grandsons would become famous as “The Fighting McCooks.”

          Heroic and bold, they fought on forty-six battlefields. No major battle took place in the western theatre of war that did not include at least one of the seventeen Fighting McCooks. They were on the front lines from the first shots of the war to the last.

          In addition to being a war story, this is a fascinating family story of life in early America. Nearly all the McCook men were college educated. They were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, politicians, and judges. Two were West Point and Naval Academy graduates. One was studying for the ministry, another was a riverboat pilot, and several were college students. Yet personal ambitions were trumped by patriotism as, one-by-one, each of the seventeen Fighting McCooks answered the call of their young country and volunteered to save the Union.

          In this impeccably researched book, former Congressman Charles Whalen and his wife, Barbara, tell a true and lively tale of the McCook men, and of the women whom they loved. The Whalens succeed brilliantly in capturing the political, military, and social climate of the time. Thanks to twenty years of research and writing, an historic epic is brought to life.

          This is American history at its best!