This afternoon, I had an e-mail from Bruce Franklin, the owner of Westholme Publishing, this afternoon regarding my Rush’s Lancers book. Bruce has been working hard at promoting the book, and has done a fine job of it so far. He gave me the best news of all so far today–the Pennsylvania Cable Network “PCN” wants to interview me about the Lancers for inclusion in their Pennsylvania Books program. The shows are one-hour long interviews with authors of books about Pennsylvania that air on Sunday nights.

It’s a real honor for my work to have been included in this series, and I’m very excited about the prospect of participating. In March, I will heading to PCN’s studios in Harrisburg, …

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Fellow barrister Jack Dempsey wrote this morning to ask me how to obtain a copy of the book from which I transcribed all of those reports on the Michigan Cavalry Brigade. I answered his question–Jack, I hadn’t realized you were a fellow member of the bar until you wrote–and then figured that I ought to share that information with all of you. Thanks for writing.

There is a company from Salem, Massachusetts called Higginson Books, which does print-on-demand (“POD”) reprints of local history books and genealogies. Several years ago, they also got into the business of doing POD reprints of rare regimental histories and memoirs. Higginson created a new division, called Ward House Books.

Ward House has a …

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In 1971, when I was ten years old, I met Muhammad Ali at a hotel in Philadelphia. We were there for some family occasion, either a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah. I honestly don’t remember which; it’s been 35 years, after all. It was just a few months after his legendary first fight with Joe Frazier, in which he took a beating and lost to Smokin’ Joe in what is often called “The Fight of the Century”. Ali took time to sit and talk to me, a Jewish kid from the suburbs, and sat me in his lap while he did. He signed a postcard for me twice–one in his normal signature, and once in what he described as his …

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I keep seeing advertisements for Norwich University’s on-line Master of Arts in Military History in all of the Civil War publications. Norwich is very much like VMI or the Citadel–it has a long and glorious history of training citizen-soldiers for the United States Army.

I am keenly aware that I do not have any academic background in history. I have not had a formal history class since the tenth grade, meaning that I am entirely self-taught. As I said, I am keenly aware of my lack of academic training in my chosen field of pursuit, and I often feel inadequate about it. I think it’s because I don’t much care for being described as an amateur historian.

I had a …

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A fellow named Tony Larson posted several comments on this blog today. Mr. Larson appears to be a first-time poster, and his comments were very interesting. Mr. Larson’s blog exists to support Republican causes, and this is a VERY blue blog. I won’t hold Mr. Larson’s political beliefs against him, as his comments directed me to a Civil War cavalry regiment I had never heard of previously.

The comments, which can be found appended to this post, provide profiles of several Republican politicians who were Civil War veterans (including William P. Lord of the 1st Delaware Cavalry, who was mentioned in my profile of Maj. Napoleon Bonaparte Knight). One of those comments referred to the 1st Oregon Cavalry. I …

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I hate El Nino. It means that, while the weather here is mild in the winter time, it’s a soggy mess.

In the past fifteen days, we’ve had 4.3 inches of rain here in Central Ohio. That on top of the second or third wettest fall on record, and the wettest December ever. There is river and small stream flooding all over the state as a consequence of all the rain and nowhere for the water to go. Needless to say, my back yard, which does not drain well under the best of conditions, is a bottomless sea of muck.

Aurora is a year old today, and she has all of the youthful exuberance of any puppy. She loves to …

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Hat tip to Mike Koepke for bringing this to light…

In late October 1864, Sterling Price’s Missouri raid reached modern-day Kansas City. Price was repulsed at Westport and then along the banks of the Big Blue River. I spoke to the Kansas City Civil War Roundtable in March 2005 and had an opportunity to tour the battlefields with Kansas City lawyer Dan Smith. With my interest in Alf Pleasonton and in cavalry operations in general, this was a natural for me. However, the tour was just a week or so after I had arthoscopic surgery on my left shoulder, and I was still in a sling and not an especially happy camper, but I really enjoyed my tour.

Most of …

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This marks the 400th post on this blog since it was started in September 2005. I never figured it would be around long enough to reach anything close to 400 posts, but here you have it. It’s now been nearly a year and a half since I launched this little project of mine and created a my own little corner of the Internet for me to rant. I hope that my readers have enjoyed it as much as I have.

Stay tuned. There’s more to come.

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For those of you not familiar with the works of Roger D. Hunt, I thought I would take an opportunity to introduce you to some of the most valuable reference works on the Civil War out there.

Roger D. Hunt (along with his late friend and collaborator, Jack Brown) has specialized in compiling the biographies, necrology, and photographs of the Union brevet brigadier generals and regimental colonels. In the capacity, Roger has published three books to date. Each one of these books is one of the most useful resources in my library.

The first book was titled Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, which is an alphabetical compilation of every Union brevet brigadier general. The book includes a brief biographical …

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A certain right-wing knuckle dragging Fascist decided to take a personal shot at me in the comments to this blog because he doesn’t like my politics. Disagree with me all you want and engage me in a dialogue, but don’t take personal shots at me because you think I’m wrong. That’s not acceptable, and I won’t have it. I told him that in an e-mail, and the response was to call me an anti-American leftist because I happen to disagree with this Administration’s policies pretty vigorously. When I responded to him, his latest was to say, “So, along with being anti-American you are a hypocrite.” Nice, huh? Classy, obviously well-thought out, and so eloquent to boot.

In response, I will …

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