Booknotes (June '09)

Acquisitions or review copies received this month:

1. Border Warfare in Southeastern Kansas, 1856-1859 by G. Murlin Welch (Linn County Historical Society, 1977).
This book is the first published edition of Welch's 1938 Master's thesis, a study of the conflict between free state and proslavery forces in Linn and Bourbon counties. Despite its almost complete reliance on free state sources, it's well regarded for its attempt at objectivity and is commonly found in the bibliography of current popular and academic studies. For publication, additional notes were added by editor Dan L. Smith to include newer references, as well as illustrations and maps. I believe there is a paperback reprint edition available, too.

2. Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians by Robert Sandow (Fordham Univ. Press, 2009).
Over the past 20 years, Appalachian studies have provided innumerable insights into issues such as wartime dissent, class differences (social and economic), unionism, and guerrilla warfare, but all, or nearly all, center on the southern range. Sandow brings the focus back up north, and it will be interesting to see the result.

3. Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861-65 by Donald L. Canney (Naval Institute Press, 1998).

4. Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War edited by Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher (UNC Press, 2009).