Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ viewed "Ben-Hur" within the context of Wallace's own life. Historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that the novel drew from Wallace's experiences as a division commander during the American Civil War under General Ulysses S. Grant. Hanson compares Wallace's real-life experience in battle, battle tactics, combat leadership, and jealousies among American Civil War military commanders to those of Wallace's fictional character of Judah, whose unintentional injury to a high-ranking military commander leads to further tragedy and suffering for the Ben-Hur family. Wallace made some controversial command decisions, and he delayed in arriving on the battlefield during the first day of the
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ million copies of the book were sold, and in 1913, Sears Roebuck ordered another one million copies, at that time the largest single-year print edition in American history, and sold them for 39 cents apiece. Within 20 years of its publication, "Ben-Hur" was "second only to the Bible as the best-selling book in America", and remained in second position until Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" (1936) surpassed it. A 1946 edition of "Ben-Hur" published by Grosset and Dunlap boasted that 26 million copies of the novel were in print. With the release of the 1959 film adaptation of the