Rugged and Sublime explores Arkansas's major clashes and locales of the Civil War. Richly illustrated with maps and photographs and containing an appendix of Civil War properties in Arkansas, it is especially useful as a guidebook to the Civil War battlefields of Arkansas.
-- 1996 Southeastern Library Association's (SELA) Southern Books Competition

Sentinels of History was conceived of as a way to mark the turn of the millennium by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. This generously illustrated book contains thirty-nine essays, each of which showcases an important Arkansas site and is written by a noted authority. Also included is a location map for these sites and a full appendix providing location information, county by county, for the more than two thousand surviving properties in Arkansas (as of June 1999) that appear on the National Register. The essays are as wide-ranging as Roger Kennedy's placement of the Toltec Mounds...

Sentinels of History was conceived of as a way to mark the turn of the millennium by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. This generously illustrated book contains thirty-nine essays, each of which showcases an important Arkansas site and is written by a noted authority. Also included is a location map for these sites and a full appendix providing location information, county by county, for the more than two thousand surviving properties in Arkansas (as of June 1999) that appear on the National Register. The essays are as wide-ranging as Roger Kennedy's placement of the Toltec Mounds...

This collection of letters bears witness to the Civil War of the common soldiers and junior officers of the Army of Tennessee. Brothers Alex and Tom Spence described to their family in detail not only the many battles in which they served, but the hardship of campaigning (they marched literally thousands of miles), the pride of serving in battle-proven units, and the pain of losing comrades to bullets and disease.

The Spences were a wealthy family who owned land, slaves, and the main hotel in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. With their successful careers and extensive property, they were among...

Dogwood trees were in full bloom as Union General Frederick Steele led 8,500 soldiers out of comfortable quarters in Little Rock and into the pine and scrub woodlands of southwest Arkansas. Steele's intended target was Shreveport, Louisiana. He planned to join another Union force coming from Fort Smith, bringing his projected complement to 12,500 troops, and then link with another Federal army in Louisiana.

Dogwood trees were in full bloom as Union General Frederick Steele led 8,500 soldiers out of comfortable quarters in Little Rock and into the pine and scrub woodlands of southwest Arkansas. Steele's intended target was Shreveport, Louisiana. He planned to join another Union force coming from Fort Smith, bringing his projected complement to 12,500 troops, and then link with another Federal army in Louisiana.

The Die Is Cast examines why a small frontier state like Arkansas would choose to sever its ties with the United States and join the southern Confederacy. Under the direction of editor Mark K. Christ, five historians examine the political and social forces that led to secession and transformed farmers, clerks, and shopkeepers into soldiers. Collectively, these essays provide an overview of the diverse passions that finally brought the people of Arkansas to war.

I Do Wish this Cruel War Was Over collects diaries, letters, and memoirs excerpted from their original publication in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly to offer a first-hand, ground-level view of the war's horrors, its mundane hardships, its pitched battles and languid stretches, even its moments of frivolity. Readers will find varying degrees of commitment and different motivations among soldiers on both sides, along with the perspective of civilians. In many cases, these documents address aspects of the war that would become objects of scholarly and popular fascination only years after...