GOT REVIEWS? Why they Matter!
Publisher Theodore P. Savas wrote this guest blog post. His company, Savas Beatie, publishes high-quality Civil War and general history books. I have long appreciated his insights into Civil War…
O Happy Day! The Release of my Long-Awaited Book
Foreword to Iowa Confederates in the Civil War Although the reaction to the September 2017 airing of Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War – a T.V. Mini-Series was…
Every story has a backstory: The struggle of writing a book
Back when I only dreamed of writing a book, I loved Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. I plugged along, turning collections of facts into rough drafts,…
From Detective to Gardener: My Journey of Writing a Book
The bloodhounds are straining against the leash in my hand, yelping in the dead of night. Turning on my flashlight, we plunge into the woods on a 150-year-old manhunt. It's…
Handshake across history: An encounter in the State Historical Museum in Des Moines
Sitting at the wooden table in the hushed museum archives, I fought to keep my eyes open. Closing my eyelids would help, I thought. Just a little rest for the…
The Professor, the Pacifist, and the Patriotic Farmer
Ernest Hemingway said, "Any man's life, told truly, is a novel." What is Memorial Day but a day to remember. I'll introduce three men from the greater Grinnell area who…
Political genius and over-confidence: A review of Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis
Countless books have been written about the causes of the Civil War. Historian David M. Potter analyzes Republican decisions that contributed to the conflagration. Potter states: “The supreme task of…
The Founders may not have anticipated this one: A controversial loophole about Secession?
A coal miner, riding an elevator deep into a mine, looks for new veins of coal. In a similar way, I have looked for things that other historians might have…
Common ground amid the vociferous slavery debate
The slavery debate was so heated that three Protestant denominations split over the issue. Pro-slavery Christians saw the plain meaning of Scripture; abolitionists pointed to a sophisticated anti-slavery biblical argument. …
Against the flow of Northern opinion: Illinois Rebels and Iowa Confederates
"The Heartland" conjures an image of waving fields of corn under wide-open skies. True-blue Midwesterners enlisted by the thousands in the Union Army. It's also true that some Illinois and…