Thomas Goodrich
Michael Thomas "Tom" Goodrich, born Michael Thomas Schoenlein (21 November 1947 – 4 December 2024), was the author of Hellstorm, which according to César Tort is the most important book of the 21st century.
Life
Born and raised in the American Mid-west, Schoenlein is a German American professional writer now living in Florida. In addition to numerous books devoted to the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, Goodrich has written several other highly popular works, including Scalp Dance—Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879, Summer, 1945—Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate, and the ground-breaking book on World War Two, Hellstorm—The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947. Goodrich's professional philosophy is simple:
- My entire adult life has been devoted to the writing of unwritten history. As we all know, unless you learn from your history, you are doomed to repeat your history. Thus, I have made it my life's mission to give voice to history's losers so that we might actually learn from our history, learn from both sides of our history, in the hope that we might thereby avoid repeating much of that history in the future. From the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln to World War Two, I have chosen the loser's perspective in my books simply to find out what is mostly unknown and hence, find out what is almost entirely unwritten. Winners do indeed write history and the libraries are full of the winner's accounts. I write that one book, that one book which will hopefully help us to not only understand and learn from the "other side," but will hopefully help us to understand and learn what real history is. Only by understanding both sides of history can we hope to avoid repeating that very history we would prefer to avoid.
Bibliography
- War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861 (2023)
- The Day Dixie Died: The Occupied South, 1865-1866 (2021)
- Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947 (2014)
- Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861–1865 (1999)
- Scalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879 (1997)
- Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre (1992)
