Friday, October 16, 2015

Richard McCaslin and A Distant Thunder

I always scan the Contributors section of essay compilations as they are frequently good sources for news about soon-to-be-finished projects from interesting Civil War scholars. In perusing the 'Look inside' materials available at the link to The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory, one notice that caught my eye was another mention of Richard McCaslin's A Distant Thunder: The Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi, which will be published at some future date by University of Nebraska Press. I first heard of this five years ago with the release of McCaslin's Rip Ford bio so hopefully the wait is nearly over by now. The current closest thing to a broad survey history of the Civil War west of the Mississippi is Alvin Josephy's The Civil War in the American West (1991) but that one left plenty of room for improvement and I would welcome a new synthesis of the current state of the T-M literature.

2 comments:

  1. The McCaslin book sounds like something that has been needed for eons. Let us hope that it is good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jim,
      It's a big subject to cram into one book. I don't envy anyone who wants to try it but Hess's book on the western theater would be a good model to follow.

      Drew

      Delete

***PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING***: You must SIGN YOUR NAME when submitting your comment. In order to maintain civil discourse and ease moderating duties, anonymous comments will be deleted. Comments containing outside promotions and/or product links will also be removed. Thank you for your cooperation.