Book Review: The Lyon Campaign in Missouri

An excellent first-person account by a "90 day volunteer" in the early days of the fight for Missouri. He covers the years leading up to the war and includes lots of interesting anecdotes about life in Iowa back then. There's not much fighting in this book, but you get a good look at the daily misery of the soldiers with their bad or sometimes nonexistent rations, hard marches, adverse weather, and incompetent officers. A must-read for anyone interested in a private's eye view of war in the Trans-Miss.

I read the free version on Google Books. Google has scanned many public domain books and while the price is right (free) they have done no editing. While it's a treasure trove of otherwise hard-to-find titles, the books aren't the best reading quality. Often the scanner makes mistakes with these old books because of faded type and creased pages. At times there are obvious typos and occasionally complete gibberish. I'm almost tempted to shell out for the Camp Pope edition just to have this fine title on my shelf.