Booknotes III (August 08)

August list of book acquisitions (Part III):

America's Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861-1863 by Brian Holden Reid (Prometheus Books, 2008). This is the middle volume of planned trilogy (the last will cover the final 18 months of the war). I haven't sampled any of the author's previous work, including the study that this book follows, The Origins of the American Civil War, but I sure hope this book analyzes Civil War operational art in a meaningful way, rather than recounting well worn campaign history.

Borderland Rebellion: A History of the Civil War on the Missouri-Arkansas Border by Elmo Ingenthron (The Ozarks Mountaineer, 1980). I've been searching for my own copy for quite some time. Can't say I would recommend the text, but the maps and illustrations are alone worth the price.

August Valentine Kautz, USA: Biography of a Civil War General by Lawrence G. Kautz (McFarland, 2008). Kautz on Kautz. Looks okay, but the limited bibliography isn't helping my enthusiasm.