Booknotes (April '09)

Acquisitions or review copies received this month:

1. The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas During the Civil War edited by Kenneth W. Howell (University of North Texas Press, 2009).
This is a fully inclusive collection of 17 essays in four parts that retains a military flavor absent from the otherwise fine recent Lone Star compilation The Fate of Texas.

2. Confederate Pathway to the Pacific: Major Sherod Hunter and Arizona Territory, C.S.A by L. Boyd Finch (Arizona Historical Society, 1996).
I reviewed this book back in 2006 [link]. Every Trans-Mississippi library should have a copy.

3. Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865 the Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts by David E. Wagner (Arthur H. Clark Co., 2009).
This is an interesting book documenting the early period of the U.S. army's often awkward transformation from a Civil War winning force to guardian and spear point of western frontier expansion. Wagner studies the punitive Powder River Expedition directed against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho bands that were harassing emigrant and commercial trails.