New Butler Center release in March: "The Die is Cast"

In early March, The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies [their distributor is Univ. of Arkansas Press] will be publishing another Civil War title, their first since 2006. From the publisher description for The Die Is Cast: Arkansas Goes to War, 1861 (edited by Mark K. Christ):

"Five writers examine the political and social forces in Arkansas that led to secession and transformed farmers, clerks, and shopkeepers into soldiers. Retired longtime Arkansas State University professor Michael Dougan delves into the 1861 Arkansas Secession Convention and the delegates’ internal divisions on whether to leave the Union. Lisa Tendrich Frank, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, discusses the role Southern women played in moving the state toward secession. Carl Moneyhon of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock looks at the factors that led peaceful civilians to join the army. Thomas A. DeBlack of Arkansas Tech University tells of the thousands of Arkansans who chose not to follow the Confederate banner in 1861, and William Garret Piston of Missouri State University chronicles the first combat experience of the green Arkansas troops at Wilson’s Creek".

Sounds like another good one, with a distinguished cast of Civil War Arkansas historians.

Other Butler Center Civil War titles:
- "A Rough Introduction to This Sunny Land": The Civil War Diary of Private Henry A. Strong, Co. K, Twelfth Kansas Infantry, edited by Tom Wing.
- "All Cut to Pieces and Gone to Hell": The Civil War, Race Relations, and the Battle of Poison Spring, edited by Mark K. Christ.
- Things Grew Beautifully Worse: Captain John O'Brien, 30th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A., edited by Brian K. Robertson.

Christ has been a busy man lately. In addition to this one and his other upcoming book, a March release from U. of Oklahoma Press titled Civil War Arkansas: 1863, Christ also found time for another conflict with Ready, Booted, and Spurred: Arkansas in the U.S. - Mexican War (co-editor William A. Frazier, Butler Center, 2009).