David J. Eicher, The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997, $39.95). Pp. 432. ISBN 0 252 02273 4.

Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1997, $24.95). Pp. 222. ISBN 0 674 16055 x.

Judith N. McArthur and Orville Vernon Burton (editors), “A Gentleman and an Officer”: A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, $30.00). Pp. 382. ISBN 0 19 509311 9.

A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times: Some Personal Recollections of War and Politics during the Lincoln Administration (Bison Books edition, with introduction by James A. Rawley; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, £18.95). Pp. 496. ISBN 0 8032 8228 1.

James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, £20.00). Pp. 256. ISBN 0 19 509023 3.

John Michael Priest, Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; pbk 1996, £15.99). Pp. 455. ISBN 0 19 510712 8.

Jack D. Welsh, Medical Histories of Union Generals (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996). Pp. 442. ISBN 0 87338 552 7.

Donald Yacovone (editor), A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997, $26.95). Pp. 372. ISBN 0 252 02245 9.

Like Ol' Man River, Civil War historiography just keeps rolling along. It changes course occasionally, leaving behind bayous of stagnant argument, while it carves out new lines of inquiry and debate. The books under review here follow the meandering course of this great river of historical writing. There are two scholarly editions of the writings of Civil War soldiers, one northern one southern, one black one white. There are two reference works, each of them bearing the rather idiosyncratic stamp of its editor. The immensely detailed battlefield narrative, as exemplified by John Michael Priest's book on South Mountain, adheres to a tradition of Civil War historical writing that resists changing historiographical fashions, and continues to appeal to a readership which knows the kind of military history it likes, and simply wants still more of it. Another honoured tradition in Civil War literature is the reprint of a “classic” written by someone who lived through the conflict, and Alexander McClure has good claims to inclusion in this category. Finally, there are two quite brief books by two heavyweight historians, James McPherson and Gary Gallagher, who address some of the perennial Civil War issues, such as why did men fight and go on fighting, and which is more in need of explanation: why did the Confederacy lose, or how did it manage to fight for so long?

Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, US$40). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 520 20616 9.

George W. Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £20.95). Pp. 546. ISBN 0 8032 6603 0.

Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £52.50). Pp. 241. ISBN 0 8032 2166 5.

Richard G. Hardorff (ed.), Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £9.50). Pp. 211. ISBN 0 8032 7293 6.

Michael E. Harkin, The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £38). Pp. 195. ISBN 0 8032 2379 X.

Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £35, US$49.95). Pp. 224. ISBN 0 521 56172 8.

Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £15.95). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 8032 9431 X.

In the contemporary United States there are 556 American Indian groups in 400 nations. Given that survival story, the tired myths of the disappearing redman or wandering savage which have distorted our understandings of Indian history are being revised. The reasons for our nearly four-century-long gullibility are manifold. The religion of winners and losers, saints and sinners, combined effectively with the scientific racism inherent sine qua non in the secular beliefs of winners and losers expressed through Linnaean and Darwinian conceptions of order and evolution. After colonizers cast their imperial gaze through lenses made of the elastic ideology of “City Upon a Hill,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Young America,” and “White Man's Burden,” most Euro-Americans rationalized a history and present in survival of the fittest terms. By 1900, the near-holocaust of an estimated ten million Indians left only 200,000 survivors invisible in an overall population of 76 million. The 1990 census count of two million Native Americans affirms resilience not extinction.