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Civil War Interactive said of Flood’s 12th book, published this fall by Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “Moving and elegantly written, ‘Grant and Sherman’ is an historical page-turner, a gripping portrait of two men, whose friendship, forged on the battlefield, would win the Civil War.”

Flood, who also authored an award-winning book about Robert E. Lee as well as books dealing with several other military conflicts, said, “I don’t start these wars, I don’t think I glorify them, but I do like writing about them.”

A New York City native, Flood graduated from Harvard. In 2001, he was honored with the Harvard Lampoon’s Clem Wood Award, past recipients of which have included George Plimpton, John Updike and Conan O’Brien.

He and his wife, Katherine, live on a farm in Richmond, an environment he says is most conducive to his literary labors.

“I can’t think of better writing environments than the ones in which I work,” he said. “For nine months of the year I work in a quiet, well-lit area of Eastern Kentucky University’s superb million-volume library, where my laptop and I have constant access to that collection and to the Internet, as well as to interlibrary loan and a staff of skilled young reference librarians.

“In the summers, my lovely wife and I are in our cottage in Maine, where I spend the cool days working at a desk beside a big window overlooking a beautiful lake a mile from the salt water. I never take my blessings for granted.”

Flood’s first novel, “Love Is a Bridge,” received national acclaim, was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 26 weeks, and won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award.

His “Rise, and Fight Again” won the American Revolution Round Table Annual Award in 1976, and his “Hitler – The Path to Power,” a History Book Club selection, was among the successful studies in history and biography that followed.

Flood’s first venture into the Civil War era was “Lee – The Last Years,” which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and won the Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award.

His short pieces have appeared in numerous magazines, and his journalistic experiences have taken him to many countries. Flood has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan and taught World Literature for two years at Sophia University in Tokyo.

According to American Heritage magazine, Flood argues in his latest book that neither Grant nor Sherman “could have achieved what he did without the other – nor could the United States.”

The two generals “were more than a pair of strategists,” according to the review. “They were like-minded friends. Yet in some ways they couldn’t have been more different. Sherman was intellectual and voluble, Grant intuitive and reserved.”

Their “subtle and complex relationship deserves attention from a sophisticated and experienced writer,” said John Y. Simon, editor of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. “Flood is up to the task.”

In 1982, EKU conferred an honorary doctor of letters degree upon Flood.