The recent flap about Wal-Mart proposing to locate a superstore in eastern Orange County has probably educated more of the general public about the Battle of the Wilderness than several decades of pronouncements by historians and tour guides.

Writers invariably romanticize at length about "the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County" without recognizing that much of eastern Orange County was also blanketed by that temperate zone jungle. Even for many locals, it came as a surprise to learn that the battle's opening engagements and a great deal of the subsequent fighting took place in Orange County.

A pair of excellent battle histories are extant, and you can't go wrong by reading either-though I recommend reading both. One is Gordon Rhea's The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864 (Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 1994), and the other is Edward Steere's The Wilderness Campaign, The Meeting of Grant and Lee (Mechanicsburg PA, Stackpole Books, 1960). Rhea's book contains the product of more recent research, and the narrative flows easily (as you would expect from a good trial lawyer). Steere's book is eminently readable and has a broader scope with greater detail. 

For those of you who have already real a great deal about that battle, you would be interested in the insights in Steve Cushman's Bloody Promenade (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1999). A UVa English professor who also wrote poetry, Steve visits the battlefield often.