Nebraska Books

Stephen D. Engle's Struggle for the Heartland takes the latest scholarship on "the campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth" and ties the military, political, and social issues faced during the campaign into an efficient and readable discussion of these events. The book is an entry in the University of Nebraska Press' Great Campaigns of the Civil War series of books. The book covers the time frame of the military campaign from Fort Henry to Corinth, including the Battle of Shiloh. Rather than focusing solely on military events, however, Engle provides a large amount of coverage to social and political considerations as well. The result, then, is a balanced overview of a campaign in which there was a "struggle for the heartland" of the Confederacy.

Northern military planners saw the obvious routes of attack into the Confederate "heartland" region provided by the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. It was simply a matter of preparing the armies to move in this direction, at least according to timid, methodical minds such as Henry Halleck and Don Carlos Buell, the two department commanders in the west. Albert Sidney Johnston, the overall Confederate commander in the west, gave wide latitude to his subordinates. One of these, Bishop Polk, had become obsessed with defending Columbus, Kentucky along the Mississippi River and virtually ignored the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland to the east, even though they were in his department. The Union preparation may have taken quite a long time if not for the aggressive nature of Halleck's then unknown subordinate Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was determined to take Forts Henry and Donelson, defenders of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively. His movement south caught both Halleck and Buell somewhat by surprise. The end result was that Grant managed to take both forts and capture over 10,000 Southern prisoners while Halleck and Buell haggled over cooperating in the expedition. As Grant's Army of the Tennessee rested and refitted along the Tennessee River south of the now captured forts Buell was to march his army southwest to meet them. Continued arguments between Halleck and Buell coupled with Grant's complacency at his Pittsburg Landing camp almost ended in disaster at the Battle of Shiloh. While Buell slowly marched toward the Tennessee River, Johnston and his subordinates had been busy at Corinth trying to recover the large amount of territory lost to Grant at the forts. The Battle of Shiloh prematurely ended these hopes as Grant's army was able to recover from their shock at being attacked and hold on as Buell's Army of the Ohio reached the field of battle. Johnston was killed and Beauregard, his second in command, was forced to retreat to Corinth. At this point in the campaign, Henry Halleck managed to obtain sole command of the armies in the West, and he gathered the armies of Grant, Buell, and Pope (fresh off a victory at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi) for a laborious advance on Corinth, the most vital railroad crossing in the Confederacy. The ending to this large campaign was anticlimactic, as Beauregard was forced to retreat due to poor water and increasing sickness in his army. Halleck had taken Corinth and cleared the Confederate Heartland of Southern armies. These military campaigns had seen great change in the way the North would prosecute the war, with important consequences.


Engle focuses quite a lot of time and energy to explaining how the large increase in the amount of Confederate territory controlled by the Union led to changes in the initial "soft war" policy espoused by the Lincoln Administration. Before Grant sailed south on the Tennessee to assault Fort Henry, Union armies were typically restrained and respectful when it came to the treatment of Southern civilians. No one better personified this idea than the commanders currently in charge of Union affairs: George B. McClellan as General In Chief with Henry Halleck and Don Carlos Buell as department heads in the West. These men were all democrats, and they believed in a war that would not upset the status quo. In other words, they wanted to leave the slavery issue alone, instead trying to treat Southerners well and return their slaves in the hope that they would come quickly and quietly back into the Union. The campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth showed that this soft war policy was not practical. Southerners continued to resist even when treated well, and guerilla forces sprung up where Confederate armies were unable to hold territory in a conventional manner. Soldiers from privates to generals also began to see the difference between poor white subsistence farmers and wealthy slave owners, eventually blaming the institution of slavery as the primary cause of the war. These troops began to resent orders such as Buell's General Orders 13a, which prevented foraging, returned runaway slaves, and otherwise treated Southerners with kid gloves. Men such as division commander Ormsby Mitchel began to take matters into their own hands, and eventually the government agreed with this "hard war" course of action. Ironically, writes Engle, the Union push into Confederate leaning western and central Tennessee only hastened the Union policy change. If Buell had instead invaded Unionist eastern Tennessee, per Lincoln's wishes, this soft war policy may have continued long past June 1862.


The Union war effort in the west was plagued with bickering among its top commanders, writes Engle. Partly to blame was the unwieldy command structure. Don Carlos Buell's Department of the Ohio and Henry Halleck's Department of Missouri joined together at the Tennessee River, precisely where the easiest avenue of attack into the Confederate Heartland was located. This naturally enough caused great friction between the two men, both of whom always proceeded cautiously and believed their own opinions were correct on military matters. McClellan and Lincoln did not help matters in Washington, instead simply ordering the two men to cooperate. While they bickered over who should move first and along what lines, Grant seized the initiative and moved, catching both men by surprise. Buell still refused to send much help and almost literally warned Halleck not to fail. Grant's attacks succeeded, and the next logical move was to concentrate on the Tennessee for a move against Corinth. This time Buell did finally move, but he managed to take his time. Luckily for Grant, Army of the Ohio division commander "Bull" Nelson marched forward rapidly and was available late on the first day at Shiloh. The command friction between these two men only ended when Halleck managed to persuade Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton that the West needed one commander.


Halleck also had his problems with Grant. Grant's victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson made Halleck jealous, and he childishly reacted by removing Grant from command on trumped up charges of drunkenness and Grant's failure to be present with his army when the Confederates launched an attack at Fort Donelson. Lincoln and Halleck, impressed with the aggressive Grant, and especially when they considered the conservative Halleck and Buell, lost no time in forcing Halleck to reinstate Grant. After Shiloh, Halleck again removed Grant from command of the Army of the Tennessee, bumping him up to the meaningless and superfluous "second in command" position during the advance on Corinth. Despite these and other quarrels, the Northern armies were able to force the Confederates from a large portion of the territory they held at the beginning of 1862.


Much of the Southern failure to hold this territory has to do with Jefferson Davis' utter lack of concern for the West. The roots of this attitude can be traced to the appointment of Albert Sidney Johnston to command in the West. Johnston was Davis' friend, and Davis believed him to be the finest general the Confederacy had. Davis left Johnston with very little men and materiel to work with, and as a result he had far too few men with which to defend a far too long defense line running from the Appalachians to the Indian Territory. To make matters worse, says Engle, Johnston frequently gave his subordinates far too much latitude in defending their various districts. This came back to haunt Johnston when General Polk became obsessed with defending Columbus, Kentucky, spending very little time preparing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. Grant's quick strike caught the Confederate generals by surprise as well, and Johnston decided not to fight for Fort Donelson, in effect abandoning middle Tennessee and the capital at Nashville. This loss of large amounts of territory shocked and angered many Southerners, and Davis finally consented to send Johnston reinforcements. Johnston and Beauregard attempted to regain the lost territory with a surprise attack at Shiloh and failed, costing Johnston his life in the process. Beauregard was subsequently unable to hold Corinth in the face of a large Union force, poor water, and increasing sickness in his command.


Despite these Union successes, the Northern Generals did not typically take the political concerns of the Lincoln Administration into account in their military planning. The main case in point for the time frame of this book, according to Engle, concerns Lincoln's desire to liberate Unionist leaning, mountainous eastern Tennessee from Confederate rule. Lincoln knew that this area centered on Knoxville, Tennessee would more readily come back into the Union than the other flatter, slave holding sections of the state. Buell repeatedly refused to advance in this direction (at the same time refusing to cooperate with Halleck), claiming bad roads and numerous other reasons for delay. Buell also clashed with the Lincoln appointed military Governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. Johnson was a Radical Republican, and he wanted southerners punished for their treason. He and Buell held violently opposite views on the prosecution of the war, and they would clash for as long as Buell held command of the Army of the Ohio.

Struggle for the Heartland is one volume of many in the Great Campaigns of the Civil War Series, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Series editors Anne J. Bailey and Brooks Simpson write that the series "offers readers concise syntheses of the major campaigns of the war, reflecting the findings of recent scholarship. The series points to new ways of viewing military campaigns by looking beyond the battlefield and the headquarters tent to the wider political and social context within which these campaigns unfolded..." In addition to exploring strictly military events from February to June 1862 along the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers, Struggle for the Heartland takes a deeper look at the political and social issues as well, weaving all of these together into a cogent whole.

The eight maps are functional, but the battle maps do not add considerably to the discussion. The notes are mostly secondary sources, but in this case it is acceptable since the book's primary purpose is to bring together a syntheses of the latest findings on this subject. I suspect that the other books in this series follow this mold as well. Rather than a bibliography, we instead get a "Bibliographical Essay" of several pages. While I typically favor a standard bibliography, the focus and goals of this series make this essay perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. The index is rather bare bones as well, but serves its purpose.

Struggle for the Heartland is a well written summary of the campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth, giving readers used to a military-only approach to the Civil War a look into the political and social aspects of of the war tie into and guide military thinking. Engle's book is a fine example of "New Military History", and one which should serve to enlighten quite a few students of the war used to standard military history approach to a campaign. I do not want to imply that this book supplants those focusing on specific battles, such Benjamin Franklin Cooling's work on Forts Henry and Donelson or Larry Daniel's and Wiley Sword's studies of Shiloh. Instead, Struggle for the Heartland supplements traditional campaign studies and ties together strategic, political, and social concerns across a large area and span of time. I would recommend this one to those readers less interested in the military tactics of the battles themselves who are instead looking to study other aspects of the war. The book also serves as a fine primer for those students of military history looking to decipher how political and social aspects of the conflict moved and shaped military campaigns.

Struggle For The Heartland: The Campaigns From Fort Henry To Corinth by Stephen D. Engle (Professor of History, Florida Atlantic University) relates the Civil War campaign that began in early 1862 with Union penetration under General Ulysses S. Grant into the Confederate held west that culminated with the Northern capture of the Southern defended town of Corinth, Mississippi. Historian Stephen Engle also examines how prewar economic relations formed in this region, how relationships between locality and loyalty were developed and expressed, the commanders on both sides of the conflict, as well as other civil and military authorities. Engle also describes the campaigns' significance within the larger theater of war and the post-war era of Reconstruction. The Struggle For The Heartland is an informed and informative contribution to Civil War Studies and an enthusiastically recommended contribution to academic reference collections, as well as Civil War buff reading lists.

Struggle For The Heartland: The Campaigns From Fort Henry To Corinth by Stephen Engle (professor of history, Florida Atlantic University) is the exhaustively researched, in-depth story about the military campaign that was the first significant Northern advance into the Confederate west. This campaign crushed all hopes the South had for avoiding a protracted battle, and set the stage for a grim and bloody war of attrition. Highly recommended for Civil War studies reading lists and reference collections, Struggle For The Heartland is an alternately fascinating and disturbing portrayal of a pivotal aspect of American military history.

Robert Whtiing, the author of two classic books on Japanese baseball, writes on the cover blurb that Reaves' book is "an important, groundbreaking work of reserach. It will be the sourcebookon the subject for years to come."

I couldn't agree more. This is an awesome book.

I am a Taiwanese PhD student doing research on Taiwanese amateur baseball in Warwick University, England. I have just received the book yesterday. It is very informative, but the part on Taiwan there are a lot of misconceptions by the author and misinformation provided by Taiwanese authority, who is trying to cover up the dark side of Taiwanese amateur baseball. For instance, Hungyeh played the 'World Champion' Wakayama little leaguers. Acutally they were not the 1967 'world champion' squad that most people believed they were (p141). The Taichung Golden Dragons was no way near Taitung Hungyeh, you have to cross a big mountain to reach Taitung from Taichung. Those two counties were not even connected. Moreover, Golden Dragons only contained two aborigine players. (p142) From the outset the Taiwanese LLB squads has been plagued by irregularities that violated LLB rules every year. Obviously one reporter of New York Times tried to defend Taiwan's wrongdoing by claiming 'Taiwan authorities has the stricest household registrations'. This is not true. From my research, government always turned a blind eye to under-the-table recruitment and even gave a helping hand through which schools could easily lure players from other counties. LLB officials could not discover the wrongdoings because they were not in Taiwan, nor could they speak or understand Mandarin Chinese. (p144-145) Tan Shin-ming was firstly signed by a Japanese professional team and went to SF Giants on an exchange player scheme. (p147) On the same page, the decline of Taiwanese amateur baseball is not the result of charges of cheating from the US. I will argue because of the sedentary culture of Chinese Confucianism, it prompted parents not to send their kids to take up exercise, not only in baseball, but other kinds of sport. On page 150, Sadaharu Oh is not a Taiwanese-born player, actually he was born in Japan and can not speak a word of Mandarin. The only connection with Taiwan is he is still holding a passport of Republic of China, because his Mainland Chinese father was a Chinese and hoped his son could continue holding Chinese passport.

As stated above, I am writing a thesis about Taiwanese amateur baseball under which many appalling conditions occurred, including over-training, fabrication scandals, vicious under-the-table recruitment, lack of education, just to name a few, all of which will subvert the beautifil images held by common people. Some Taiwanese people already accused me of unethical because you do not turn back on your country. But my intention is to expose the dark sides of Taiwanese amateur baseball and let people know it is not right to train and use student players in this way....

I do not have a wonderous,nor knowledgeable background about baseball. But I am learning the sport and I am visiting foreign lands,...This book is very fascinating for me.

...With their closer pitcher, Kim, coming to Arizona from Korea, I became interested in learning how other countries reacted to baseball. This book was very easy reading and I didn't feel left out because of my meager background in baseball.

Any one who wants to learn more about other cultures needs to read this book because sports is very much a part of culture and baseball, the all American sport, is no longer just that.

Thanks for a great, entertaining, yet highly factual and informative book!

Using a real historical event (The Children's Blizzard of 1888), Gray constructs a believable story of two young people trying to overcome their own struggles. Hannah feels guilt over surving the terrible blizzard while her brothers did not. Isaac -- who kept Hannah safe during the blizzard -- has a terrible home life. They both join leagues with Eliza Moore, a young widow and suffragette. Young readers will sympathsize with Hannah and Isaac who are trying to stand on their own two feet and make a difference in the world. Readers will also wonder if Hannah and Isaac's growing fondness for each other will turn into something more permanant. A good read for 5th grade and up.

I think this book was extrordinary piece of literature i love the gossip that people have about these two characters and what they did do in the hay stack i like the way it goes from hannah to iisac then back to hannah i think gray should make a sequal to this book. I cryed when i read it it is a emotional and caring book and Gray did a Fabulous Job so good work.

This story, told as it is from the alternating viewpoints of a girl and boy who shared a close-to-death experience, is full of powerful images and strong emotions. The cast of characters covers a wide range of personalities, some colorful, some heart-warming, and some downright mean. The plot grabs you and pulls you along, as the two teens leave their homes to live in town, meeting those who will be in their lives forever and others who'd like to send them back home. A wonderfully good read for older kids who enjoyed Little House on the Prairie.

These are great reference maps for generalized recreational activities. Not as detailed as a topo map, but still packed full of outstanding information. I have one for every state and I don't leave home with out them. An improvement over simple highway maps.

The map is beautiful and (reasonably) accurate, but its small scale limits its use for hiking. Many of the contours are so closely spaced, faint, or interrupted by text that they are nearly useless. The publishers tried to squeeze the entire national monument onto one map sheet, which makes for a good overview and planning map, but a poor hiking map.
Unfortunately, you have rather limited options, at least when it comes to paper maps: The USGS 7.5 minute topo sheets are great, but they don't show the trails, local hiking maps are hit and miss (some can be great). State-wide mapping software that lets you print customized hiking maps might be the way to go, but I haven't tried them yet.

This map is part of the Trails Illustrated series covering many national parks. These are all sturdy and convenient.

Your map choices are essentially this one, the National Park Service map, and USGS topos. The NPS map is fine if you're staying at Rock Harbor Lodge and doing light day activities from that base.

If you're backpacking, or doing long day hikes, the Trails Illustrated map is absolutely essential because the USGS topographic maps are outdated. For example, the topo shows a no-longer-existent East Feldtmann trail on the southwest part of the island.

The topo also shows inaccurately the trail that goes over White Oak Ridge in the same area. The Trails Illustrated map shows the trails correctly.

This map also shows (1) group and individual campsites and (2) distances between trail junctions that accord with the NPS signage. Both features make it useful for planning your trip.

My father grew up in Hartington during the depression.
He had an Irish immigrint father and a Swedish immigrint mother.
They had 5 boys and 3 girls.
The boys were very athletic and were profiled as the "Hartington Dynasty" because of their athletic ability.
The dad died in August but a couple years ago I was able to take him back to Hartington. It was wonderful to see how happy he was talking about his past.
How the MD in town would have my father drive him to his housecalls and his influence on my dad which prompted my father to go into medicine.
About hitchhiking each weekend to get home from college and going back to college. Playing football for Wayne State and the struggle to pay for school.
Stories about his Swedish mother baking for the high school football team after games.
So many wonderful stories.
I look forward to reading this book.

VISIT TO HARTINGTON presents a child's world, but seen from the distance of middle age. The author presents a series of memorable characters: -- the school music teacher who came to town with all the enthusiasm, but none of the flimflam of River City's Harold Hill; -- the Norwegian batchelor farmer uncle (yes, they lived outside Minnesota and Garrison Keillor's imagination); -- the small black boy from Alabama who appeared in Hartington by chance and seemed as unknown as if he had come from another planet; -- the parents who were mainstays of their community and provided a loving home for their three sons; but, mostly, the middle son who survives polio, loses his best friend, and goes on to a job near New York before he decides the East Coast rat race is not for him. The reader watches as the middle son copes with his mother's final illness and bids good bye with him as he says, "Good bye, Hartington. Thanks for the love." These stories are about one time and place, but most readers will see parts of their own childhood and their own feelings for their aging parents in its pages.

A good read for any day, these short stories give an interesting view into the life of a small town in the midwest. A heartwarming outlook on growing up and growing older. This collection is more than just a book to have on the shelf to take up space, but something that can be reread and enjoyed time and again!

As a great (x3) grandson of Eliza Spalding, I found this book (and "Memoirs of the West", by Eliza's daughter) to be very hard to put down. When I did, all I wanted to do was tell my daughters about the women in their family. I came across this book doing a search of ancestors, and benefitted greatly from the work done by Karen Rico, whose review is above.

This is a story of tough people, who, amazingly, held on to their religious convictions through every test possible, even the threat of ugly death. Once again, truth is more outrageous than fiction.

As a great-great-greatdaughter of eliza hart spalding, I found the book very informative and enlightening. I never realized the perils and problems that being the first white women in a land of natives that could be encountered. Both Narcissa and Eliza had courage and strength even though they seemed to have different personalities. The author was very informative and he backed his findings whenever possible with historical fact and copies of letters and diaries. I found that I was able to visualize the trek across the country and the life that these women had to endure by being missionaries. The author even noted the problems between Catholics and Protestants during that time.

As Eliza Spalding's great-great grandaughter, I was deeply moved by the account given of Eliza and Narcissa's journey into the rugged and primitive Northwest territory in 1836. In our current age of technology, where knowledge of the unknown comes to us in full color without direct experience, it is unimaginable to consider two young women,driven from family and loved ones by their devout spritual quest,brave enough to endure the rigors of exploration. Mr. Drury's words both enlightened me and filled me with pride to be connected to one of these relatively unknown heroines. I will recommend this book to my high school students, to draw on the example of the courageous role modeling illustrated by the lives of both Eliza and Narcissa. In light of their fearless independence and their unparalled commitment to a cause greater than themselves, they teach us much about the human spirit. One may need to rethink the origin of the women's liberation movement as the pages of this book are turned, revealing the strength and enduring power of Eliza and Narcissa.

Not your typical history book. This one is full of stories about Nebraska starting in the mid 1800's and the stories show just how unlawful and savage this area could be. The pictures are wonderful. As a Nebraskan interested in history on my home state, I found this to be a very interesting book.

A great author captures the early frontier days as they were meant to be read, heard and told. In the days before Husker football (before the 1890's), Nebraska was in its infancy. Many towns popped up and law and order was not always to be found. Wayne Lee tells of these tales in the river towns, cattle drive towns and farming communities. This book is more interesting than you can imagine. Also, another great purchase is Wayne Lee's Bad Men and Bad Towns. If you buy these books, you not be unhappy.

Not your typical history book. This one is full of stories about Nebraska starting in the mid 1800's and the stories show just how unlawful and savage this area could be. The pictures are wonderful. As a Nebraskan interested in history on my home state, I found this to be a very interesting book.

Theodore's Roosevelt's "The Winning of The West" volume one is unlike most modern histories. His is a story of the founding of the American Republic West of the Original 13. This volume is of the late Colonial Period. He is unafraid to make very harsh judgements, attacking both the American Indians and the Pioneers, although it is clear who he favours. He does have many prejudices, but, to be honest, most Historians do. President Roosevelt's were just of the less respected, today at least, kind. The whole series is very much worth reading, and is a worthy investment of capital and time. Ryan M.

Roosevelt does quite well to capture the essence of what went on during the period when the colonists began westward. The point made by the editor that it is indeed a wonder that this work was ever created at all is well taken when one considers Roosevelt's involvement with so much else in his life while he produced what, for the time, was a very scholarly opus.

One must be patient with the narrative; it tends to be choppy. One must also be patient with, or at least understanding of, TR's view of the world and especially his notion of upon whom the greater glory of the westward expansion rests.

All in all, it is seemingly a must read (as is the entire series) for anyone having either an interest in the history of this time, or an interest in TR and his works.

Before Roosevelt begins sensationalizing in the second volume, he describes the utter wilderness of the region and characterizes both the individual settlers and Indians who would play decisive roles in the settlement and migration of whites westward, and also gives sweeping portraits of the Indian nations encountered during our westward expansion. The hardships of the settlers due to the ruggedness of their new mountain home, their self-reliance, the cold winters, the need to fell forest for pasture and tillage, the daily peril of Indian attacks, and the distant relations with their origins to the east complete this wonderfully written and diversified study of early American frontier life.

"Year in Nam: A Native American Soldier's Story" is a memoir by Leroy TeCube, a Jicarilla Apache from New Mexico. He served as an infantryman in the Vietnam War from January 1968 to January 1969. TeCube fills this book with many details about the daily life of an infantryman in a war zone: being in a firefight, undertaking a combat air assault, walking point, etc. He discusses the weapons they used. The story is told in a straightforward style that is considerate of the general reader. For example, the author stops to define or explain such military terms and acronyms as "MOS," "tracer round," and "concertina wire."

TeCube does not flinch from describing the horrors and loss of war. But he balances out the narrative by discussing some of the humorous and friendly activities of the troops. He discusses the encounters, both positive and negative, he and other troops had with Vietnamese civilians. Along the way he offers many observations on the plants and animals he observed in Vietnam.

An important theme of the book is how TeCube's Native American heritage and identity provided him with an anchor in this dangerous, challenging environment. Particularly interesting are his accounts of how both other U.S. troops and Vietnamese people reacted to his Indian appearance. TeCube discusses his ethnic identity and its impact on his combat tour in a matter-of-fact way. Another important thread that winds through the book involves leadership and soldiering skill; we see TeCube move up the ranks as he gains experience in combat. Overall, this is an interesting memoir that brings a valuable perspective to the rich canon of Vietnam War literature.

Having done a tour myself, I have seen the movies and read several books that have come out about the war in Viet Nam. Nothing, and no one, has been able to authenticate the reality of the day to day operations of search and destroy missions, the monotony, the high levels of alertness, the camaraderie, the tragedies, and the senseless pain and suffering that took place on both sides, until now. Leroy does a superlative job of describing the feelings of the GI and those of the Vietnamese. His description of events are factual yet without sensationalism, a manner that can only be told by a seasoned combat veteran who became immune to the catastrophic events that surrounded him, as a means of survival, both physically and mentally.

This is a must read for anyone who served in I Corp or the Americal. You will again feel yourself walking through the paddies, on the trails, smelling the odors of the villages, or hugging a rice paddy dike as the sniper rounds were in-coming. This book truly describes the reality of the life of a combat infantryman (grunt) during the war in Viet Nam.

In very straightforward, understandable prose, Mr. Tecube has captured the essence of the daily horrors and futility of America's presence in Vietnam. The real heroes of the book are the members of Leroy's platoon. They're a bunch of American kids that really didn't want to be where they were but tried to do make the best of a tragic situation. What's refreshing about Tecube's approach is that he's not out to condemn the soldiers, the politicians, or the enemy. Yet he's able to convey a sense of the absurdity of the situation and still maintain his dignity and objectivity.

I've read a number of books about Vietnam but none conveys the sense of what it was really like the way Tecube does.

What a wonderful compilation! Benemann has done a great job of roping in important historical tidbits with the correspondence and journal entries he includes. It's well-controlled and well-edited, yet expansive (if that makes sense). My only disappointment was not being able to know more about the writers' lives (--no fault of the editor, since such information is unavailable).

What a wealth of information the Bancroft Library must include! (This from a San Francisco native and Berkeley grad--but I must say that one needn't be a "local" to appreciate this). The themes of the Gold Rush era--entrepreneurism, adventure, overcoming obstacles, wonderment--will resonate with everyone. If you are at all interested in California history, this is a must-read.

(Side note to fellow Californians: I first saw this book on a visit to the California history room of the Sacramento Public Library, and was so engaged that when I returned home I immediately ordered it from Amazon. The Sacto library has a wealth of original mss. as well as books like these. I encourage a visit to this treasure-trove)!

There is nothing more enticing than reading someone's diary or letters--especially when you know that the writer is a real person. For this reason alone, Benemann's compilation is mouth-watering. If, on top of this voyeurism, you are intersted in Gold Rush history, then this is the book for you! Benemann does a noteworthy job of roping together accounts of Argonauts and their experiences under common themes so that the individual contributions don't seem disjointed. As a native San Franciscan who was reared constant tidbits of California history (even as a college student with access to the Bancroft Collection), I was neverthless surprised to learn so very many new things about my City.

My only complaint is that I would have liked to know more about the writers themselves. I believe that this is not the fault of Benemann, but rather that more of their personal history is not available.

Side note to fellow Californians: I first came upon this book at the Sacramento Public Library in their beautiful history room; I ordered it from Amazon as soon as I returned home. The library has a positively astounding collection of letters, mss., and maps that kept me enthralled for hours.

Would you like to have seen the Bay Area when it was still wilderness? When Elk and grizzlies roamed the hills of Marin County, and the native wildflowers grew so thick on the slopes of Angel Island that their perfume was almost nauseating? Perhaps you'd just like a chance to have been in San Francisco when you could still buy a lot in the Financial District for $200? In The Year of Mud and Gold, William Benemann gives you the chance to experience all that and more. Through the journals and letters of California's first American settlers, we are able to re-live California's glory days. Like Benemann's editorial commentary, most of the letters are extraodrdinarily well-written, and paint a vivid picture not only of the Paradise that was the Bay Area, but also of daily life in the frenzied early years of the Gold Rush when were trying to create a new society and civilization in a wild land where the only law was that of supply and demand.