Frontier Army Sketches


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Frontier Army Sketches


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"This book - first issued in 1873 and almost unknown except to a few devotees - offers eighteen semi-fictional sketches of incidents in the pioneer Southwest. James W. Steele, a young Army officer stationed at remote outposts during the late 1860s, wrote from first-hand knowledge and with an experienced storyteller's skill. In these short-short stories with test endings you sense much of the flavor of O. Henry, who came later. Steele also had George Ruxton's alert ear for for frontier dialect and was perhaps first to record it for the Southwest. Above all, Steele was ahead of such historians as Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb in realizing how the frontier changed people who lived there"--Jacket.




The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West


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A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.




Bulletin


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The Dial


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The View from Officers' Row


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A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Capturing military men in contemplation rather than combat, Sherry L. Smith reveals American army officers' views about the Indians against whom they fought in the last half of the nineteenth century. She demonstrates that these officers—and their wives—did not share a monolithic, negative view of their enemies, but instead often developed a great respect for Indians and their cultures. Some officers even came to question Indian policy, expressed misgivings about their personal involvement in the Indian Wars, and openly sympathized with their foe. The book reviews the period 1848–1890—from the acquisition of the Mexican Cession to the Battle of Wounded Knee—and encompasses the entire trans-Mississippi West. Resting primarily on personal documents drawn from a representative sample of the officer corps at all levels, the study seeks to juxtapose the opinions of high-ranking officers with those of officers of lesser prominence, who were perhaps less inclined to express personal opinions in official reports. No educated segment of American society had more prolonged contact with Indians than did army officers and their wives, yet not until now has such an overview of their attitudes been presented. Smith's work demolishes the stereotype of the Indian-hating officer and broadens our understanding of the role of the army in the American West.




Saarbrück to Paris, 1870: a strategical sketch


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The Franco-War of 1870 marked an absolute watershed: France had been the military and cultural centre-point of mainland Europe for some centuries, its fashion copied, its armies feared and its language the language of diplomacy and the highest circles. Growing in power, prestige and ambition, the states of Germany stood in opposition to this hegemony, a newborn power with much to prove. Its dominant driving force was Prussia, under the determined statesman Bismarck. The French goaded the Germans into action, provoking war. The Germans had been preparing for the conflict for some years and sprung into action, and the ensuing action would be a debacle for the French and a might victory for the Germans. This book is part of the Special Campaigns series produced around the turn of the 20th century by serving or recently retired British and Indian Army officers. They were intended principally for use by British officers seeking a wider knowledge of military history. Author — Lt.-Colonel Sisson C. Pratt (Late R.E.) (1844-1919) Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in 1907, London and New York, by Swan Sonneshein & Co. Ltd. Original Page Count – vii and 209 pages. Illustrations – The original maps cannot be provided with this edition due to their A3 size.




Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two


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The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.




Mountain Villages


Book Description

Alice Bullock says, "We can't go back." Thomas Wolfe said it and has been quoted ever since. Yet it bears repetition, especially today and in reference to Alice Bullock's Mountain Villages of New Mexico. Times change and as Bullock laments in this book of memoirs, commentaries and anecdotes, it is too late to do much about it except what she herself has done: write it down. We can't go back...we can only, hopefully, remember. And that is what this book does for all of us who have either lived in a mountain village or dreamed of living in one. This collection of tales of Cimarron, Lamy, Galisteo, Wagon Mound, Watrous, Rayado and other northern New Mexico towns and locales makes a perfect companion to her book "Living Legends of the Santa Fe Country," also from Sunstone Press. Alice is also the author of "Loretto and the Miraculous Staircase" and "Monumental Ghosts," both from Sunstone Press. Includes Teacher's Manual.




William Harding Carter and the American Army


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In this first full-length biography of William Harding Carter, Ronald G. Machoian explores Carter’s pivotal role in bringing the American military into a new era and transforming a legion of citizen-soldiers into the modern professional force we know today. Machoian follows Carter’s career from his boyhood in Civil War Nashville, where he volunteered to carry Union dispatches, through his involvement in bitter campaigns against Apaches in the Southwest, to his participation in the Indian Wars’ tragic final chapter at Wounded Knee in 1890. Carter’s life and work reflected his times—the Gilded Age and the Progressive era. Machoian shows Carter as an able intellectual, attuned to contemporary cultural trends and tirelessly devoted to ensuring that the U.S. Army kept abreast of them. In collaboration with Secretary of War Elihu Root, he created the U.S. Army War College and pushed through Congress the General Staff Act of 1903, which replaced the office of commanding general with a chief of staff and modernized the staff structure. Later, he championed the replacement of the state militia system with a more capable national reserve and advocated wartime conscription. Since his death in 1925, Carter’s important contributions toward modernizing the U.S. Army have been overlooked. Machoian redresses this oversight by highlighting Carter’s contributions to the U.S. military’s growth as a professional institution and the nation’s transition to the twentieth century.




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