The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history—it was the centerpiece of the hugely successful book and movie Gone with the Wind. But though the epic sieges of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Berlin have all been explored in best-selling histories, the one great American example has been treated only cursorily as a footnote. Marc Wortman remedies that conspicuous absence in grand fashion with The Bonfire, an absorbing narrative history...