John Banks, a longtime journalist, is a columnist for Civil War Times magazine. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Dallas Morning News, American History, America's Civil War and elsewhere. Banks is secretary-treasurer of The Center for Civil War Photography and a board member of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation and Battle of Nashville Trust. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Carol -- his beloved "Mrs. B."

Over more than a year, John Banks crisscrossed the country, exploring battlefields, historic houses, forts, and more. He rode on the back of an ATV with his "psychotic connection" in Mississippi, went under the spell of an amateur hypnotist at a U.S.