If you want to research the Civil War in the West, you should begin with "The Official Records of the War of Rebellion," commonly abbreviated as "the OR's." That will keep one busy for quite some time. The next step would be use of the four-volume series titles "Battles and Leaders." Those are available in paperback. While the Union perspective, nor the AoT, nor the Army of the Trans Mississippi are not my areas of interest, a search of the catalogs for recently published books on Civil War history will reveal more recent worthwhile books written about those aspects of that War than about the ANV. As far as black migration to the West, that area has probably not been explored due to limited, and scattered, or poorly cataloged, source documentation and limited reader interest As far as women are concerned, you might try a search for some of the following, which are just a few of the titles in my library: "101 Virginia Women Writers" "A Share of Honor: Virginia Women 1600-1945" "Idols, Victims, Pioneers: Virginia's Women from 1607" "Documenting Women's Lives: A Users Guide to Manuscripts at the Virginia Historical Society" "Women of the South In War Times" "Valor and Lace: The Roles of Confederate Women 1861-1865" "Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront" "Confederate Women" "Women of the Civil War" (was "Bonnet Brigade") "Heroines of Dixie" Ladies of Richmond" "Noble Women of the North" "Women of Gettysburg" "Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Observation" "The Women of the Confederacy" "Heroines of Dixie: Spring of High Hopes" "Heroines of Dixie: Winter of Discontent" "Belles, Beaux and Brains of the 60's" "Hearts of Fire: Soldier Women of the Civil War" "Trials and Triumphs: The Women of the American Civil War" "The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia" "White Society in the Antebellum South" "The Plantation Mistress" "A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy" "The Southern Lady From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930" "Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing" "Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War" "The Woman's War in the South: Recollections and Reflections of the American Civil War" "Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia" "Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey" Happy Reading! Annette Elam Wetzel >-----Original Message----- >From: Harold Miller <[email protected]> >To: [email protected] <[email protected]> >Date: Tuesday, August 10, 1999 12:27 AM >Subject: History books >>also a war fought in the "west" - places like MO, Kansas, Arkansas, Arizona. >>Finding that in the history books is difficult. Also, the men from the west >>were fighting against U.S. Grant at Shilo, Vicksburg, etc. He had to beat >>them before he was noticed by the powers that be, and sent against Lee. >>Another one of my gripes.....what about women in the history books? >>Or what about the colored troops who fought and died in 1860-1865? >>or the early black immigration to the west?