Thanks, Ken, for your rundown of the book. When a study is promoted as a social history that also includes politics and military events, it is often the case the author has very little background in the latter. This results in almost complete reliance on secondary sources (often poorly chosen) and careless interpretation leading to many obvious gaffes that a military-minded reader easily picks up. What you say about this book reminds me of the category of errors I found in Lause's "Race and Radicalism in the Union Army". One hopes that the anonymous readers that the univ. press employs will note these for correction, but unfortunately they often do not, possibly because the readers have the same non-military history background as the author.

Good stuff, thanks again.