Tsarist coastal artillery in Estonia and Jesse James in Italy

While I was away on my writing retreat in Tangier I popped up on the Web a couple of times. The organizers of the èStoria Festival, who hosted me for the release of the Italian edition of my Jesse James book, have posted this video of my panel on the outlaw. Everyone's speaking Italian except for yours truly, so I'll forgive you if you don't watch it.

I also did a guest post for the Osprey Publishing blog on a shore battery in Estonia dating to the Tsarist era. It’s located near the village of Suurupi, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It's an interesting bit of military history and nearly gave us a nasty surprise!

My book on Tombstone is out now!

I've just received the author's copies for my latest book, Tombstone - Wyatt Earp, the O.K. Corral, and the Vendetta Ride 1881-82. This is published by Osprey Publishing and as usual they did a bang up job on the layout and artwork.

This book looks at the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as well as the lead up to the confrontation between the Earp brothers and the Cowboys and the vendetta that lasted for some months afterwards.

As the back cover blurb states:

The Gunfight at the OK Corral on 26 October 1881 is one of the most enduring stories of the Old West. It led to a series of violent incidents that culminated in the Vendetta Ride, in which Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and several other gunslingers went after their rivals the Cowboys.
Like most tales of the Wild West, the facts are buried under layers of myth, and the line between good guys and bad guys is blurry. Wyatt Earp, leader of the so-called “good guys”, was charged with stealing horses in the Indian Territory in 1870 and jumped bail. Becoming a buffalo hunter and gambler, he got into several scrapes and earned a reputation as a gunfighter.
Several times he helped lawmen arrest outlaws, but usually his assistance came more because of a personal grudge against the criminal than any real respect for law and order. He even got fired from a police job in Wichita for beating up a political rival.

This is my sixth book for Osprey and my fourteenth overall. I'm currently talking with the editors about more projects. Stay tuned!

My book launch in Italy

I'm baaaack!

As I mentioned before, I was in Gorizia, Italy, for the ninth annual èStoria Festival. This history/book fair is hosted by my Italian publisher, who recently came out with these Italian-language editions of two of my books. For three days, a park in Gorizia was filled with tents. Several book dealers set up shop and the other tents were given over for talks and panels.

The theme this year was Bandits, and I was on a panel about Jesse James. I was the only non-Italian in the room but luckily they provided me with a translator. This guy was amazing. He grew up speaking four languages and went on to learn a dozen more. He gave a simultaneous translation so seamless it almost felt like the other panelists were speaking two languages at the same time.

My fellow panelists were a historian, a journalist, and a philosopher, and so we were an eclectic bunch. I gave a talk on "Jesse James, Inc.", on how the James legend was commodified even in his own lifetime.

The others put him in the context of the greater theme of banditry, and compared him with some of the famous bandits of southern Italy. Italian unification in the 19th century was mostly led by northern Italians, and while the southern Italians went along with it, there was some grumbling over the loss of independence. Some bandits took advantage of this by branding themselves rebels as well as thieves. Hmmm. . .sounds familiar.

I managed to slip away to do some sightseeing as well. Hit the link above about Gorizia to learn about this interesting town on the border with Slovenia. I also went to visit the Isonzo World War One battlefield.

I had a great time and hope to go back some other year. After the festival I headed over to Slovenia for a week. I'll be starting a series on Gadling this week about that.

One of my books has been translated into Swedish!

After hearing earlier this year that two of my military history books for Osprey Publishing are being translated into Italian, it turns out that I'm also getting readers in Sweden. My book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics has been translated into Swedish and bound with two other Osprey titles into one of a multivolume series on the Civil War. You can see my byline at the bottom of this volume.

Here's the whole series. It's published by Svenskt Militärhistoriskt Bibliotek (the Swedish Library of Military History) and is, oddly enough, my first hardcover edition.

 

A big thanks to Stefan Aguirre, one of my new Swedish readers, for these photos!

Wild West Photo Friday: Pinal, Arizona, a lost boom town

I've been working on the maps for a book on Wyatt Earp and the Arizona War for Osprey Publishing. One place I couldn't put on the map with any exactitude was this town--Pinal, Arizona.

Pinal was established in the 1870s to mill the ore for the nearby Silver King mine. Pinal's post office opened in April 10, 1878. The mine was a rich one and the town quickly grew to about 2,000 residents. It even had its own newspaper called the Pinal Drill. The town benefited from its good location about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, making it more accessible than some other mining towns.

The town had all the usual miners, prospectors, gamblers, and ladies of the evening. One of them was Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's common-law wife. In Tombstone, Wyatt had fallen in love with the beautiful actress Sadie Marcus and left her. The jilted Mattie moved to Pinal and --> went into a quick spiral of decline as a drug-addicted prostitute. She killed herself on July 3, 1888.

Unfortunately, silver prices slumped and by 1890 there were only ten people left in Pinal. The post office closed November 28, 1891. Now nothing remains of this old boom town. Even the exact location is in dispute. Imagine that--an entire town that nobody alive remembers. Probably there's nobody alive who even once met someone who remembers it. It's gone.

The top photo shows ore wagons from the Silver King mine at the Pinal mills, circa 1885. The bottom shot is a southeast view of the mill and town of Pinal, circa 1880.

For another shot of Pinal, check out my post on creative foraging in the Civil War. That blacksmith shop is in Pinal.


Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Italian Connection

My book Armies of the Adowa Campaign, about the disastrous Italian attempt to invade Ethiopia in 1896, has been translated into Italian by the publisher Editrice Goriziana. I haven't seen an actual copy yet, but I notice that they've changed the cover. You can see the new cover here.

I've also been invited to give a talk at a history conference in Italy this May. The subject of the conference is historical bandits, and my talk is tentatively called "Jesse James, Inc." I'll be talking about how Missouri's most famous outlaw was used to sell books, movies, tourist attractions, and generally make money. The process started even while Jesse was still running around robbing banks!

I'll post more details on this conference when the plans get finalized.

Herding turkeys in the Wild West

"They can have my turkeys when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers."

One of the side effects of writing nonfiction is that you end up with a bunch of little side stories and tidbits of information that don't fit in the book. These end up as material for later works, talking points at parties, or. . .blog posts!

I'm currently writing a book on Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the O.K. Corral gunfight and his Vengeance Ride. One minor figure in this history is Henry Clay Hooker, a prominent rancher in southern Arizona who sheltered Wyatt and his crew as they rode around the countryside hunting the Cowboys. Hooker was played by Charleton Heston in the movie Tombstone.

Before Hooker became a big rancher, he had quite a past. Born in New Hampshire, he moved to California in 1853, ran a store, and drove cattle to Nevada mining camps. A fire destroyed his store in 1866 and in order to make money he bought 150 turkeys at $1.50 each and herded them from California to Carson City, Nevada, where he turned a tidy profit by selling them for $5 each. This gave him enough money to get started in the cattle business, and he eventually became one of the Arizona Territory's most successful ranchers.

Herding turkeys? I didn't even know this was possible! While I doubt any Western movie has ever shown a hard-bitten hero with a ten-gallon hat herding turkeys, it's one of the remakrable stories of the Old West.

My Jesse James book gets its first review, and it's four stars!

My latest book, The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876 has received its first Amazon review less than a month after being released. It must have been from one of the many people who preordered it. I love preorders. It's is my fifth book for Osprey and twelfth book in total. To see my other Osprey titles, click on my Osprey author's page. You can see some interior images here.

The review was four stars and reads:

"The James-Younger Gang's attempted robbery of the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota in September 1876 is probably the most famous bank robbery in American history, not to mention the most disastrous in terms of execution. Three of eight gang members were killed. Three more were wounded and captured. Only Frank and Jesse James, both wounded, escaped. Two civilians died as well. The robbery netted a total of $26.70!?! Sean McLachlan recounts the story of this horribly botched robbery in THE LAST RIDE OF THE JAMES-YOUNGER GANG, a 2012 Osprey release.

"After sketching in the early lives of the James and Younger Brothers, McLachlan details the origins of the Northfield caper, pre-planning, execution and the post-raid fates of the surviving robbers. Though I've read other books on the Northfield robbery, McLachlan's account still makes for compelling reading. The narrative is complimented by vintage B&W and contemporary photographs, color maps and exciting, color crime scene artwork by Peter Dennis.

Wild West afficiandos will enjoy THE LAST RIDE OF THE JAMES-YOUNGER GANG. It's a comprehensive, exciting summary of outlaws in action. Recommended."

More dispatches from Iraq

I'm still working hard on my Iraq travel series. In my latest articles I visit the soon-to-reopen National Museum of Iraq, Saddam Hussein's palaces, and I go on a beer run in Basra.

I've also done a guest post for Osprey Publishing, which publishes my military history books. It's about the Baghdad North Gate War Cemetery, where many of the British Empire's fallen from the First World War are interred.

So don't be caught napping! Go check out these one-of-a-kind articles. And if you like what you see, please tweet, share, comment, and blog about it. I'm always available for guest posts and interviews.


Photo of some of Basra's finest by Sean McLachlan. These guys were assigned to guard us. Good thing there aren't pirates in the Shatt al-Arab anymore!

My latest Wild West book out now!

While I was traveling in Iraq my latest book was published by Osprey Publishing. The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876 came out on October 20, while I was somewhere in the Sunni Triangle. This book detailed the ill-fated raid that destroyed the James-Younger gang. It's is my fifth book for Osprey and twelfth book in total. To see my other Osprey titles, click on my Osprey author's page. You can see some interior images here.

A Russian hussar in the Wild West

Wait, what's a picture of a Russian hussar doing on a Civil War/Wild West blog? Well, there is a Wild West connection.

I've been researching a book on Tombstone for Osprey Publishing and have come across lots of little stories that can't make it into the text. One of them is about Russian Bill, who passed through Tombstone claiming to be an aristocratic lieutenant of the Imperial White Hussars of the czar. He had asked for leave in 1880 to go explore the American frontier. Another story has him coming to the Arizona Territory earlier after having been court marshaled for punching a superior officer.

Russian Bill strutted around town dressed in Western gear and claiming to be a hardened outlaw. He certainly kept company with them. In 1881 he and Sandy King, another Tombstone hoodlum, were caught in the little town of Shakespeare, New Mexico, with some stolen cattle. Vigilantes hanged the both of them.

There is no record of this lynching causing an international incident. Was Russian Bill really one of the czar's elite cavalry? It's hard to say. There were lots of Europeans wandering around the Old West claiming to be what they weren't. If all of them had been telling the truth, every castle, manorial estate, and general's headquarters in Europe would have been depopulated!

Without doing some serious research in Moscow, I guess we'll never know.

There's another Old West connection to this painting. It was done by none other than Frederic Remington.

A Sneak Peek At My Next Wild West Book

I've just received an advance copy of my next book for Osprey Publishing, The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876. While I call this a Wild West book, I suppose it's really a Wild North book, since it chronicles the gang's ill-fated raid on a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Here's yours truly showing off a copy.

The interior is illustrated with about 50 period photographs. . .

. . .plus original color artwork.

This is my fifth book for Osprey and twelfth book in total. To see my other Osprey titles, click on my Osprey author's page. I'm currently writing a sixth and discussing future projects with them. It's a great company to work for! This title is already available for preorder and doing pretty well in the Amazon rankings considering it doesn't come out until October 23. Osprey titles tend to do well on preorder. Check out my post on why readers preorder books.

Guest blogging about Weaving Military History Into Fiction over at Osprey Publishing

My military history publisher Osprey Publishing has been kind enough to let me do a guest post about Weaving Military History Into Fiction. Yes, my nonfiction publisher is letting me talk about my fiction work, even though they have a fiction imprint! Osprey has always been great to work with and this just proves it. Head on over and check it out.

Back in Spain

My family and I just returned from our regular summer stay in Oxford. We're now back in Santander, northern Spain. I had a productive time in England as usual--hiking, going to London, and researching in the Bodleian Library. I also sat down with my editors at Osprey Publishing to talk about future titles. It looks like I'll have some interesting assignments for 2013.

I have six weeks here in Santander before going off on my next adventure. All I can reveal at the moment is that Gadling, the travel blog I work for, is sending me on a trip that will make my expedition to Somaliland look like a walk to the corner shop. Stay tuned for details!

In the meantime, I'm settling down for six weeks of serious research for the trip and also writing for my book on Wyatt Earp's Vengeance Ride. I'll also have some more time to blog. Looking back over the last few weeks of posts, I see that I've drifted from the Civil War a bit. Because of my current research I've been posting more about the Wild West. There are also more personal posts than normal. Does this bother anyone? Do people come here just for Civil War stuff? There hasn't been a fall-off in hits, but I don't want to alienate my core audience. In any case, there will be more Civil War stuff coming up this week.

The Civil War adventures of James Earp

James Earp was the older brother of famous lawman Wyatt Earp. He never earned the fame of his gunslinger brother, or even the lesser notoriety of Virgil and Morgan Earp. Jim, as most people called him, worked as a saloon keeper in Tombstone but didn't participate in the Gunfight at the OK Corral or the subsequent Vendetta Ride.

I never knew much about him until I started writing a book on the Earps for Osprey Publishing, due out in 2013. It turns out Jim saw service in Missouri during the Civil War. When the war started, he enlisted in the 17th Illinois Infantry, a Union outfit that soon marched into war-torn Missouri.

On October 21, the 17th Illinois saw its first major action at the Battle of Fredericktown in southeast Missouri. Confederate General "Swamp Fox" Thompson was in the area with 1500 men and had burnt an important railroad bridge. The 17th Illinois and some other units went after him.

Thompson placed his rebels along a wooded ridge overlooking the road on which the Union troops were approaching. A smaller detachment with three cannon stood in plain view in a cornfield next to the road as bait. The Union column arrived and attacked the Confederates in the cornfield. The 17th Illinois advanced on the enemy center as two other units attacked either flank. After some heavy fighting, the rebels retreated, but the Union troops soon came under a galling fire from the rebels hidden on the ridges.

Despite this, Thompson saw he was outnumbered about two-to-one and that he needed to withdraw. The 17th Illinois managed to capture one of the cannons in the cornfield, an old iron 12-pounder that was out of date, although not as rickety as the wooden cannon used at another battle in Missouri!

Being in the thick of the fight, the 17th Illinois suffered several casualties. One of them was James Earp. He took a bullet in the shoulder that crippled his left arm for life. He was invalided out and spent the rest of the war recovering and working various jobs. He joined his brothers in Tombstone in 1879, where the family gained their place in history. James died in California in 1926.


Numerous online sources say he was wounded on October 31, but the battle was in fact on October 21 and I cannot find any record of a battle involving the 17th Illinois for October 31. I suppose, then, that he was wounded at the actual Battle of Fredericktown and not some skirmish ten days later. I could be wrong, though. I'm in England at the moment and away from my collection of Civil War books!

Two other Earp brothers, Virgil and Newton, also enlisted in the Union army. I'll try to find out more about their experiences for future posts.


Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The dangers of delivering the mail in Civil War Missouri

The Official Records has an interesting report from 150 years ago.

Report of Colonel Daniel Huston, Jr., Seventh Missouri Cavalry.

HEADQUARTERS SUB-DISTRICT,
Lexington, Mo., June 15, 1862.

SIR: I have received a report from Lieutenant-Colonel Buel to the following purport

A mail escort, which left Independence for Harrisonville on the morning of the 11th instant, consisting of 23 men and 2 non-commissioned officers of Captain Cochran's company of Missouri State Militia, was fired into 15 miles from Independence, and 2 men of the escort were killed and 2 wounded. A scout sent out by Colonel Buel failed to find the marauders. Colonel Buel also reports that information, believed to be reliable, had been received that Quantrill, with 60 men, was near Pink Hill. He closes his communication by saying:

I shall not for the present have any more of my men shot carrying the mail between Independence and Harrisonville. I am obliged, by orders from District Headquarters, to keep the route open. I shall compel secessionists in this vicinity to carry that mail for a while. I believe this will be the best course I can pursue. On receipt of your dispatch yesterday I prepared one for Major Linder, at Harrisonville, and sent it by a secessionist, who has returned safely. . .

As I explain in my book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, while sending secessionists to deliver the mail reduced attacks, it only encouraged the conscripted secessionists to join the bushwhackers. If they were going to be shot at, they reasoned, they might as well be shot at by the other side! Telegraph was the safest way to communicate, but it was impossible to protect the entire line and bushwhackers were constantly cutting them.


Photo of the Army of the Potomac's General Post Office in Brandy Station, Virginia, 1863, courtesy Wikipedia.

O is for Oxford

As I mentioned in my "E" post, my family and I spend every Easter and summer in England, or more precisely Oxford. We just got back home to Spain from our latest trip. It went well. We saw most of the people we wanted to see and I had a meeting with one of my publishers, Osprey Publishing, to discuss my future titles. While I can't say anything until plans are finalized, it looks like I'll have some good news and some interesting trips pretty soon!

When my wife is working in the astronomy department and my son is at camp, I work in the Bodleian Library. It's one of the largest libraries in the English-speaking world and a treasure trove for any writer. It also has some fine architecture, as you can see from the photo.

Part of the Bodleian is being refurbished and they're put up barriers decorated with their own A to Z, based on their collections!

For more on Oxford, check out my posts about it on Gadling, Midlist Writer, and Grizzled Old Traveler. Two of the most popular articles are about a pagan grove and Norman church and one on the Pitt-Rivers, which is the coolest museum in the world.

My upcoming Jesse James book gets a cover!

I've just seen the cover art for my next book, The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James & the Northfield Raid 1876. This is a new title in the Raid series for Osprey Publishing and my fifth book for that publisher. Osprey is great to work with and I'm busy on another book for them on Wyatt Earp and the Arizona War.

These two titles are a bit of a departure for Osprey, in that they aren't strictly military history (for which Osprey is famous) but rather Wild West. Despite hard times for publishers and the economy in general, Osprey continues to grow because they're a leader and innovator in a popular niche market.

Thanks to artist Johnny Shumate for such a great cover! I've seen the interior art too and it includes a train robbery, the gunfight at Northfield, and the Younger brothers' last stand at Hanksa Slough. Expect some exciting, detailed, and historically accurate paintings. This title is already available for preorder on Amazon and has already garnered a sale despite it's not coming out until October. It's available for preorder on Barnes & Noble too.

In other good news, I've heard that another of my Osprey books, Armies of the Adowa Campaign: The Italian Disaster in Ethiopia, is going to have a second printing. It's been selling well! It's often in the the top 20 or top 10 in Amazon's Ethiopia category. While that's a rather narrow category, there's a good chance anyone searching for books on Ethiopia would be interested in mine.

The mystery of the Arizona Confederate currency

On this day 150 years ago, an expedition of sixty Confederate Texans captured Tucson, in the Arizona Territory. They met no resistance. The white population in Tucson was pro-South and came out to cheer. The Mexican majority had no strong opinions one way or the other; they just wanted protection from the Apaches.

I lived in Tucson for many years and have always had an interest in Arizona's colorful territorial days. Tucson was only slightly less wild than its neighbor, Tombstone, and Wyatt Earp got into gunfights in both cities. I'm researching a book on Earp for Osprey Publishing, so more on that in a later post.

The band of rebels was led by Captain Sherod Hunter and was the vanguard of an invasion force that was trying to take the Southwest for the Confederacy. Just a week before, the main rebel army had defeated a Union force at the Battle of Valverde, New Mexico. If they could secure the stagecoach route to California, the rebels could avoid the Union blockade that was putting the Southern economy in a stranglehold. There was also talk of establishing a Confederate trading post at the port of Guayamas, 300 miles south of Tucson.

A column of Union troops from California would soon be on its way and would clash with the rebels just outside Tucson on April 15 at the Battle of Picacho Pass, often called the "westernmost battle of the Civil War". The rebels retreated, and Tucson's Confederate days were over.

Once a local historian told me that during his brief stay, Captain Hunter ordered a local printer to issue some Confederate banknotes for the Territory of Arizona. This historian, whose name I can no longer recall, said they are the most valuable Confederate banknotes because they were printed in small numbers and barely got into circulation. I have never seen one and my (rather limited) searching hasn't found any reference to them.

Did these banknotes exist? Were they confiscated by the victorious California column, or is there some hidden cache out in the Sonora desert waiting to be found? There's a story in that. . .


Image of Confederate flag being raised over Tucson courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Guest blogging over at Osprey Publishing

As my regular readers know, one of my many writing hats is as a military historian for Osprey Publishing. Regular readers will also know that I recently wrote a travel series about Greece. Well, I've put one hat atop the other and write a guest post for the Osprey blog about Oddities from the Athens War Museum. Head on over and check it out!