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.

Civil War Photo Friday: Arkansas Confederate regimental flags

We're lucky that so many regimental flags from the Civil War have come down to us. As treasured banners, veterans strove to preserve them and thus many museums have examples. Here are some from the Arkansas Confederate regiments. The one above is from the 22nd Arkansas Infantry shows off some of the battles they fought in. Oak Hills is the Confederate name for the Battle of Wilson's Creek and Elk Horn is the Confederate name for the Battle of Pea Ridge. The opposing sides often had different names for the same battle.

The 8th Arkansas Infantry also showed off their battle experience.

The 9th Arkansas Infantry incorporated the Confederate battle flag into their regimental banner. The Stars and Bars is a common element to Confederate regimental flags.

The 15th Northwest Arkansas regiment put a nice fringe around theirs. It's remained in wonderful condition.

Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons, which has a nice collection of Arkansas Confederate flags.

If you like Civil War flags, check out my posts on the bushwhacker Quantrill's black flag, the banner of the 22nd US Colored Troops, and two Confederate flags of Missouri.

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.

Book Review: John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was

John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was by Jack Burrows
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm giving this book three stars as an average. At times it merits five stars; at others it sinks down to one.

This is the story of John Ringo, a mysterious figure in the Tombstone, Arizona, Cowboy-Earp feud. The author, Jack Burrows, rightly points out that very little is known for certain about this outlaw and that most of what has been written about him is supposition or simple fabrication. Yet Burrows oversteps it when he says, "There have been more extravagant claims made for John Ringo than for Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, and Buffalo Bill combined." Anyone who has read deeply into Old West literature knows this isn't true. Ringo simply isn't famous enough to compete with the mythology built up around these greater figures.

The shrill tone continues throughout this book, in which Burrows lambasts earlier writers for their inaccuracies and inventions. While they deserve it, it begins to get repetitive. I know a lot was made up, that's why I bought this book! These lesser writers could have been dismissed in much shorter order, leaving more room to talk about the real John Ringo.

The problem is, Burrows hasn't discovered enough new material to fill a book. What he has found is groundbreaking--a family diary, family stories about Ringo, and some important details about his life such as his participation in the Texas Hoodoo War. These paint a much clearer picture of the outlaw than what we had before. He also gives an even-handed, well-cited account of events in Tombstone and makes a convincing case that Ringo's mysterious death was a suicide and not murder.

Too often Burrows fills the blank spaces in our knowledge with amateur psychology. In one passage he states that his sisters couldn't have developed "strong or realistic feelings" about him before he left the family and went to the frontier (p. 139). His sisters were twelves, nine, and seven. Children of this age can't have strong feelings for an elder sibling? In another passage he actually made me laugh out loud when he described the tree Ringo sat by when he killed himself as having a "deep, all-embracing tree bole with its spreading trunks as beckoning womb", reminding him of the mother he abandoned (p. 196).

Ridiculous pop psychology and time-wasting complaints about other writers aside, this is still the only book that comes close to a serious biography of an understudied outlaw. Perhaps some day someone will write a better one.

View all my reviews

Civil War Photo Friday: Civil War hand grenades

Here are two interesting shots of hand grenades from the Civil War. They already have captions so I won't say much. One thing to point out, though, is that grenades were nothing new in the 1860s. I've already blogged about medieval hand grenades, and they became popular in the 17th century when "grenadiers" used them.

They eventually fell out of favor because their slow-match fuses were unreliable in wet weather, could be pulled out by quick-thinking opponents, and could be dangerous to the thrower. Grenades saw a revival in the Civil War because the percussion cap made for a more reliable way to ignite the charge. As you can see, both of these examples had to hit head on or they wouldn't go off. This proved a problem and many soldiers didn't like hand grenades, thinking them unreliable.

Guest blogging about Spiritualism in the American Civil War over at Black Gate

I'm guest blogging today over at the Black Gate blog about Spiritualism in the American Civil War. It's a nice chunky article so head on over, settle down with a cup of coffee, and learn what freakiness our ancestors got up to.

Black Gate will be publishing my historical fantasy novella, The Quintessence of Absence, next month. It will be free online so you'll have a chance to sample some of my writing.

This is my second guest post for them. A little while back I blogged about Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Magic. I'll be doing more posts for them in the future, so stay tuned!

Another photo of cowboys with a pterodactyl

While this blog is mostly dedicated to Civil War and Old West history, my most popular post is the one I did on the Thunderbird photo and False Memory Syndrome. It's about the enduring mystery over an alleged photo of a giant lizardy bird shot down by some cowboys near Tombstone and reported in the 26 April 1890 edition of the Tombstone, Arizona, Epitaph. Check out the link for more. It includes some fun shots of various cowboys and Civil War soldiers who have downed pterodactyl-like critters.

Now another photo has emerged on the Internet. It's the best quality I've seen so far but with all the Photoshopping going on these days, excuse me if it doesn't turn me into a True Believer. I found this on Reddit from a thread that links to my Thunderbird article. Thanks buddy, hope this post gets you some traffic back! All is connected on the Internet.