Digital Commons Network^™

A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, And Sectionalism In The Civil War Era, Edward R. Crowther

Civil War Book Review

Even as the Civil War still raged, interested observers knew that religion had brought on and sustained the conflict, a view that a trove of more recent scholarship has sustained. In more recent years, Civil War era scholars have turned to studying the border between the United States and the Confederate States to further elucidate the nature of union and secession in ways that complicate a simpler binary of north versus south. Holm’s splendid monograph combines these two vital areas of study revealing many important and ironic ways in which border religion at once sought to mitigate disunion impulses, but …

Book Review Of Cattle In The Backlands: Mato Grosso And The Evolution Of Ranching In The Brazilian Tropics, By Robert W. Wilcox., Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Humboldt's Mexico: In The Footsteps Of The Illustrious German Scientific Traveller, By Myron Echenberg, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Challenges Of Elephant Conservation: Insights From Oral Histories Of Colonialism And Landscape In Tsavo, Kenya, Peter Ngugi Kamau, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Conceived Versus Lived Social Spaces And The Transformation Of The Morro Da Providência Favela Of Rio De Janeiro Since 2008, Jamie Worms, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination: Final Report, Cecile C. Guin, Jada Thomas-Smith, Elizabeth Winchester, Tracey E. Rizzuto, Aimee H. Moles, Steven Maberry, Haojie Zhu, Judith L. Rhodes, Juan J. Barthelemy

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Personal Memoirs Of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, Larry Grant

Civil War Book Review

A Valuable Addition: The Annotated Edition of U.S. Grant's Memoirs In July 1861, Colonel Ulysses S. Grant "received orders to move against Colonel Thomas Harris, who was said to be encamped at the little town of Florida" where Harris was collecting rebel volunteers from among the local Missourians.....

The Weeping Time: Memory And The Largest Slave Auction In American History, Benjamin Fitzpatrick

Civil War Book Review

Anne C. Bailey's latest book, The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History adds to the historiography of the domestic slave trade by focusing on the too often neglected and inhumane practice of the slave auction. Bailey examines the largest recorded slave auction....

Southern Reconstruction, Richard Gerber

Civil War Book Review

Southern Reconstruction

Mr. Leigh has written several books, including Lee's Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies, and Trading With the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the Civil War. He holds a degree in engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA....

Framing The Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions Of Secession, Reconstruction, And Redemption, 1860-1902, Adam H. Domby

Civil War Book Review

Beyond Conventions: A Less than Solid South Paul E. Herron's Framing the Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions of Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1860-1902, examines how State Constitutional Conventions evolved in the South. It is an ambitious book examining convention....

The Election Of 1860: A Campaign Fraught With Consequences, Michael Robinson

Civil War Book Review

Politics of Consequence: The Many Campaigns of 1860 The election of 1860 has garnered an enormous amount of attention from scholars because of its weighty implications. Historians of the Civil War era invariably earmark this political contest as America's most important presidential election in cl....

Slavery On The Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border In The Antebellum And Civil War Eras, Jack Trammell

Civil War Book Review

Slavery on the Borderlands Slavery has been called the original sin in American history, and there have justifiably been hundreds of studies, books, and treatments of its many nuances and intersectionalities. It continues to be in many ways the American conversation. One shortcoming in the ....

Alabama's Class Politics Through The Civil War Crisis -- And Its Echoes, Michael W. Fitzgerald

Civil War Book Review

In an overview of the role of "poor whites" in Alabama's political development, and of the non-slaveholding majority of whites specifically, one cannot define a simple pattern. But two broad factors structured Alabama's antebellum evolution. The first is the commitment to racial supremacy across a....

Look At Lincoln: Stanton: Demythologized, Frank J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary By Stahr, Walter Publisher:Simon & Schuster Retail Price:$35.00 ISBN: 9781476739304 Biographies of Lincoln's cantankerous but able lawyer who served as his Secretary of War are controversial. That's what makes Stahr -- himself a la....

The American Elsewhere: Adventure And Manliness In The Age Of Expansion, Jimmy L. Bryan Jr.

Civil War Book Review

Interview with Jimmy L. Bryan Jr., author of The American Elsewhere: Adventure and Manliness in the Age of Expansion Interviewed by Tom Barber Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today the Civil War Book Review is pleased to speak with Jimmy L. Bryan Jr., Associate Professor of History at Lamar ....

Editorial: Winter 2018, Tom Barber

Civil War Book Review

This issue military history, its tactics and its combatants, organizes our featured reviews. Benjamin F. Cooling reviews Gordon Rhea's On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864. Cooling finds Rhea's book important for highlighting how Grant adapted to warfare on the Union's eastern fro....

Annotations, Cwbr Editor

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.

A New Ultrasonic Transducer Sample Cell For In Situ Small-Angle Scattering Experiments, Sudipta Gupta, Markus Bleuel, Gerald J. Schneider

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Author(s). Ultrasound irradiation is a commonly used technique for nondestructive diagnostics or targeted destruction. We report on a new versatile sonication device that fits in a variety of standard sample environments for neutron and X-ray scattering instruments. A piezoelectric transducer permits measuring of the time-dependent response of the sample in situ during or after sonication. We use small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to demonstrate the effect of a time-dependent perturbation on the structure factor of micelles formed from sodium dodecyl sulfate surfactant molecules. We observe a substantial change in the micellar structure during and after exposure to ultrasonic irradiation. …

The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped The American West, Charles R. Bowery Jr.

Civil War Book Review

Students of American military history tend to focus on the nation’s large-scale, conventional conflicts between peer forces on set-piece battlefields. This focus ignores the salient fact that in the nation’s two hundred forty-plus years, her land forces have spent most of their time and resources in low-intensity conflict: counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, or peacekeeping. That cognitive dissonance makes Robert M. Utley’s new book an interesting and useful contribution. Utley, a former Chief Historian of the National Park Service and author of more than twenty books, is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the American West. In The Commanders, Utley shifts …

Death, Disease, And Life At War: The Civil War Letters Of Surgeon James D. Benton, 111th And 98th New York Infantry Regiments, 1862-1865, Peter J. D'Onofrio

Civil War Book Review

Union surgeon James Dana Benton witnessed firsthand the suffering and death brought about by the ghastly wounds, infections, and diseases that wreaked havoc on both Union and Confederate soldiers. A native of New York, Dr. Benton penned a series of letters throughout the war to his wife and family relating his experiences with the 111th New York Infantry as an assistant surgeon, and later with the 98th New York as surgeon. Dr. Benton was present for some of the war’s most gruesome and important battles, including Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. He was also present for the …

A Forgotten Front: Florida During The Civil War Era, Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr

Civil War Book Review

Perhaps the most tenuous claim in this otherwise fine collection of essays on the history and peoples of Florida between 1860 and 1865 comes in the opening paragraph. “Florida is often the forgotten front of the Civil War, both for scholars and in memory,” Seth Weitz declares in the volume’s Introduction, “as many often overlook the subject and tend to focus on what they deem to be the more significant theaters and participants in the conflict.” (1) That is an accurate description if browsing for Florida in general histories of the war, and one that might, in fairness, be said …

Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins Of U.S. Citizenship, Johann N. Neem

Civil War Book Review

In the midst of the transnational turn in American letters and historiography, Carrie Hyde explores the nature of “civic longing,” in which real and imagined outsiders cultivated a desire to be part of the American nation. A work of literary criticism, Hyde argues that, prior to the 14^th amendment, citizenship in the U.S. was defined through “culture” rather than law. “In the absence of a centralized legal definition of citizenship,” Hyde writes, questions of citizenship were explored through “political philosophy, Christian theology, natural law, literature, and didactic writing” (8).

Your Heritage Will Still Remain: Racial Identity And Mississippi's Lost Cause, Thomas J. Brown

Civil War Book Review

“The Lost Cause, and white Mississippian adherence to its doctrine," argues Michael J. Goleman, "has done more to unify conservative Mississippians than any amount of pseudo-ethnic homogeneity or regional patriotism that swelled during the sectional conflict and Civil War" (131). He earns this conclusion by devoting the first two of his six chapters to the politics of the 1850s and the secession crisis and the third to the war years, in each of which he points out divisions within the state that white Mississippians tried to resolve by stressing conflict with northerners. Goleman invokes group identity theory, and especially the …

The Civil War Dead And American Modernity, Meg Groeling

Civil War Book Review

Author Ian Finseth, in The Civil War Dead and American Modernity, has mined the graveyards, remains, and memento mori of the Civil War to offer a reinterpretation of their cultural importance to the evolution of American modernization. His thesis is that the Civil War dead became one of the most powerful symbols of the relationship of the present to the past. Finseth is an Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of North Texas, and this book is one of the volumes in the Oxford Studies in American Literary History.

Blood Moon: An American Epic Of War And Splendor In The Cherokee Nation, Jeff Fortney

Civil War Book Review

John Sedgwick’s Blood Moon is a troublesome and downright vexing account of the Cherokee Nation through first half of the nineteenth century. The book mostly focuses on the Cherokees through the era of Removal with a brief final section on the American Civil War. In a similar fashion to his acclaimed book War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel that Shaped America, Sedgwick tells his story through the lens of two leading figures: Major Ridge (and later Stand Watie) and Principal Chief John Ross. While Major Ridge advocated negotiating favorable terms for Removal, Ross fought …

American Amphibious Warfare: The Roots Of Tradition To 1865, Hal Friedman

Civil War Book Review

Gary Ohl’s book on Early American amphibious warfare is a welcome addition to the historiography on this highly specialized aspect of naval warfare. He introduces new concepts or perspectives that I think will assist other scholars in their endeavors. At the same time, he also employs this history in a way that might be very valuable to strategic planners and policymakers. As such, the book is not just history but informed historical policy analysis. The latter, however, may alienate purists as much as it attracts practitioners.

Fall 2018, Tom Barber

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.

Annotations, Tom Barber

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.

The Army Of The Potomac In The Overland And Petersburg Campaigns: Union Soldiers And Trench Warfare, 1864-1865, Charles R. Bowery

Civil War Book Review

After their Breaking Point: Petersburg and the Refuge of Trenchwarfare Beginning in the late nineteenth century, and continuing into the Centennial period, the eastern campaigns in the Civil War's last year suffered from a dearth of serious scholarship. For a long time, authors and historians consi....

Shades Of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers, And Local Communities In The Civil War Era, Meg Groeling

Civil War Book Review

Irish Unionism Author Ryan Keating, Assistant Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino has made a significant contribution to the study of Irish soldiers in the Civil War. Shades of Green does not look at units like the 69th New York or the Irish Brigades of Boston....