Book News: "An Arch Rebel Like Myself"

For quite a while now, I've been following the progress of Gene Armistead and Robert Arconti's biography of California Confederate Dan Showalter through Arconti's blog. Any new project connected to the Civil War in the Far West sparks my interest, so this one is right up my alley. Frustrated with their book being in university press development limbo for two years with no end in sight, the authors took the manuscript to McFarland, which is publishing it later this year under the title "An Arch Rebel Like Myself": Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas (October 2018).

Here's the brief description: "Dan Showalter, a Pennsylvanian transplant to the Yosemite Valley, was Speaker Pro Tem of the California State Assembly at the outbreak of the Civil War and the exemplar of treason in the Far West among the pro-Union press. He gained notoriety as the survivor of California's last political duel, for his role in the display of a Confederate flag in Sacramento, and for his imprisonment after an armed confrontation with Union troops. Escaping to Texas, he distinguished himself in the Confederate service in naval battles and in pursuit of Comanche raiders. As commander the 4th Arizona Cavalry, he helped recapture the Rio Grande Valley from the Union and defended Brownsville against a combined Union and Mexican force. Refusing to surrender at war's end, he fled to Mexico where he died of a wound sustained in a drunken bar fight at age 35."

We all know how the blurb game works, but it's something that the dean of Civil War in the Southwest historians, Jerry Thompson, has given the book a ringing endorsement. I'm looking forward to reading it.