Faculty & Staff Authors: Dr. Thomas W. Cutrer

Cutrer, T. W., & Parrish, T. M. (2018). Doris miller, pearl harbor, and the birth of the civil rights movement (First, Ser. Williams-ford texas a & m university military history series, number 158). Texas A & M University Press.


On the morning of December 7, 1941, after serving breakfast and turning his attention to laundry services aboard the USS West Virginia, Ship's Cook Third Class Doris "Dorie" Miller heard the alarm calling sailors to battle stations. The first of several torpedoes dropped from Japanese aircraft had struck the American battleship. Miller hastily made his way to a central point and was soon called to the bridge by Lt. Com. Doir C. Johnson to assist the mortally wounded ship's captain, Mervyn Bennion. Miller then joined two others in loading and firing an unmanned anti-aircraft machine gun--a weapon that, as an African American in a segregated military, Miller had not been trained to operate. But he did, firing the weapon on attacking Japanese aircraft until the .50-caliber gun ran out of ammunition. For these actions, Miller was later awarded the Navy Cross, the third-highest naval award for combat gallantry. Historians Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish have not only painstakingly reconstructed Miller's inspiring actions on December 7. They also offer for the first time a full biography of Miller placed in the larger context of African American service in the United States military and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Like so many sailors and soldiers in World War II, Doris Miller's life was cut short. Just two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miller was aboard the USS Liscome Bay when it was sunk by a Japanese submarine. But the name--and symbolic image--of Dorie Miller lived on. As Cutrer and Parrish conclude, "Dorie Miller's actions at Pearl Harbor, and the legend that they engendered, were directly responsible for helping to roll back the navy's then-to-fore unrelenting policy of racial segregation and prejudice, and, in the chain of events, helped to launch the civil rights movement of the 1960s that brought an end to the worst of America's racial intolerance."

Cutrer, T. W. (2017). Theater of a separate war : the civil war west of the mississippi river, 1861-1865 (Ser. The littlefield history of the civil war era). University of North Carolina Press.


Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the trans-Mississippi theater was site of major clashes from the war's earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater's distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle. Theater of a Separate War details the battles between North and South in these far-flung regions, assessing the complex political and military strategies on both sides. While providing the definitive history of the rise and fall of the South's armies in the far West, Cutrer shows, even if the region's influence on the Confederacy's cause waned, its role persisted well beyond the fall of Richmond and Lee's surrender to Grant. In this masterful study, Cutrer offers a fresh perspective on an often overlooked aspect of Civil War history.

Cutrer, T. W. (2015). Empire of sand : the struggle for the southwest,1862 (Ser. Civil war campaigns and commanders). State House Press.


Empire of Sand is the story of the Southern attempt, in 1862, to open a path to California, thus securing a port on the Pacific Ocean. The port would enable them to gain access to the gold fields of Colorado and California and expand the practice of slavery into the Southwest. This quixotic undertaking was attempted by a few regiments of Texas cavalry, known as "the Army of the Southwest," commanded by the ambitious but ultimately incompetent Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley. Marching out of San Antonio and across the forbidding deserts of West Texas, the Sibley Brigade achieved initial success in winning a significant victory over the Union forces of Col. E. R. S. Canby at the battle of Valverde. They then traveled up the Rio Grande to capture Albuquerque and Santa Fe and to threaten Union possession of Colorado territory.  A Federal force consisting of US regulars and Colorado volunteers, however, fought the Texans to a standstill at the battle of Glorieta Pass and decisively checked the Rebels when the notorious Col. John Chivington led a daring raid behind their lines.

“‘Price and McCulloch Are Fighting Each Other Harder than they Are Fighting the Enemy’: Divided Command and the Failure of the Confederate War Effort in Missouri.” Shea, W. L. (2013). Confederate generals in the trans-mississippi : essays on america's civil war. (L. L. Hewitt, A. W. Bergeron, & T. E. Schott, Eds.) (1st ed., Ser. The western theater in the civil war). University of Tennessee Press. p.1-39


Until relatively recently, conventional wisdom held that the Trans-Mississippi Theater was a backwater of the American Civil War. Scholarship in recent decades has corrected this oversight, and a growing number of historians agree that the events west of the Mississippi River proved integral to the outcome of the war. Nevertheless, generals in the Trans-Mississippi have received little attention compared to their eastern counterparts, and many remain mere footnotes to Civil War history. This welcome volume features cutting-edge analyses of eight Southern generals in this most neglected theater--Thomas Hindman, Theophilus Holmes, Edmund Kirby Smith, Mosby Monroe Parsons, John Marmaduke, Thomas James Churchill, Thomas Green, and Joseph Orville Shelby--providing an enlightening new perspective on the Confederate high command.      Although the Trans-Mississippi has long been considered a dumping ground for failed generals from other regions, the essays presented here demolish that myth, showing instead that, with a few notable exceptions, Confederate commanders west of the Mississippi were homegrown, not imported, and compared well with their more celebrated peers elsewhere. With its virtually nonexistent infrastructure, wildly unpredictable weather, and few opportunities for scavenging, the Trans-Mississippi proved a challenge for commanders on both sides of the conflict. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, only the most creative minds could operate successfully in such an unforgiving environment.      While some of these generals have been the subjects of larger studies, others, including Generals Holmes, Parsons, and Churchill, receive their first serious scholarly attention in these pages. Clearly demonstrating the independence of the Trans-Mississippi and the nuances of the military struggle there, while placing both the generals and the theater in the wider scope of the war, these eight essays offer valuable new insight into Confederate military leadership and the ever-vexing questions of how and why the South lost this most defining of American conflicts.

Tucker, S., Arnold, J. R., Wiener, R., Pierpaoli, P. G., Cutrer, T. W., & Santoni, P. (2013). The encyclopedia of the mexican-american war : a political, social, and military history. ABC-CLIO.


This user-friendly encyclopedia comprises a wide array of accessible yet detailed entries that address the military, social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of the Mexican-American War. The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: A Political, Social, and Military History provides an in-depth examination of not only the military conflict itself, but also the impact of the war on both nations; and how this conflict was the first waged by Americans on foreign soil and served to establish critical U.S. military, political, and foreign policy precedents. The entries analyze the Mexican-American War from both the American and Mexican perspectives, in equal measure. In addition to discussing the various campaigns, battles, weapons systems, and other aspects of military history, the three-volume work also contextualizes the conflict within its social, cultural, political, and economic milieu, and places the Mexican-American War into its proper historical and historiographical contexts by covering the eras both before and after the war. This information is particularly critical for students of American history because the conflict fomented sectional conflict in the United States, which resulted in the U.S. Civil War.

Editor, “Oh, What a Loansome Time I Had”: The Civil War Letters of Maj. William Morel Moxley, Eighteenth Alabama Infantry, Moxley, W. M., & Moxley, E. B. (2013).

“Jacob Brown,” The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War.


This user-friendly encyclopedia comprises a wide array of accessible yet detailed entries that address the military, social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of the Mexican-American War. The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: A Political, Social, and Military History provides an in-depth examination of not only the military conflict itself, but also the impact of the war on both nations; and how this conflict was the first waged by Americans on foreign soil and served to establish critical U.S. military, political, and foreign policy precedents. The entries analyze the Mexican-American War from both the American and Mexican perspectives, in equal measure. In addition to discussing the various campaigns, battles, weapons systems, and other aspects of military history, the three-volume work also contextualizes the conflict within its social, cultural, political, and economic milieu, and places the Mexican-American War into its proper historical and historiographical contexts by covering the eras both before and after the war. This information is particularly critical for students of American history because the conflict fomented sectional conflict in the United States, which resulted in the U.S. Civil War.

“The Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War,” in James C. Bradford, ed., A Companion to American Military History. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2010, pp. 73-98.


With more than 60 essays, A Companion to American Military History presents a comprehensive analysis of the historiography of United States military history from the colonial era to the present. Covers the entire spectrum of US history from the Indian and imperial conflicts of the seventeenth century to the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq Features an unprecedented breadth of coverage from eminent military historians and emerging scholars, including little studied topics such as the military and music, military ethics, care of the dead, and sports Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic  Summarizes current debates and identifies areas where conflicting interpretations are in need of further study

McClellan, G. B., & Cutrer, T. W. (2009). The mexican war diary and correspondence of george b. mcclellan. Louisiana State University Press.


In his standard reference work on the Civil War, Generals in Blue, Ezra Warner declared George B. McClellan (1826--1885) "one of the most controversial figures in American military history." In this revealing book, Thomas W. Cutrer provides the definitive edition of McClellan's detailed diary and letters from his service in the Mexican War (1846--1848), during which he began the rise that culminated in his being named general in chief of the Union forces and commander of the Army of the Potomac early in the Civil War. McClellan graduated second in his class from West Point in 1846 and served as a second lieutenant in Company A of the prestigious Corps of Engineers, the only formation of combat engineers in the United States Army. The company participated in Major General Winfield Scott's invasion of Mexico, playing a prominent role in the siege of Vera Cruz and the battles of Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec and in the capture of Mexico City. Although only twenty-one years old at the war's end, McClellan earned brevet promotions to first lieutenant and then captain for his efforts. McClellan's colorful diary and frequent letters to his socially and politically prominent Philadelphia family provide a wealth of military details of the campaign, insights into the character of his fellow engineers -- including Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard -- and accounts of the friction that arose between the professional soldiers and the officers and men of the volunteer regiments that made up Scott's command. A courageous, indefatigable, and superbly intelligent young man, McClellan formed close personal loyalties in those years. His diaries also reveal a man contemptuous of those he perceived as less talented than he, quick to see conspiracies where none existed, and eager to place upon others the blame for his own shortcomings and to take credit for actions performed by others. On the banks of the Rio Grande during his first weeks with the army, McClellan wrote in his diary: "I came down here with high hopes, with pleasing anticipations of distinction, of being in hard fought battles and acquiring a name and reputation as a stepping stone to a still greater eminence in some future and greater war." Carefully edited by Thomas W. Cutrer, these diary entries and letters do indeed trace McClellan's rapid development as a soldier and leader and put on full display the talent, ambition, and arrogance that characterized his career as general and politician.

"“John Hemphill.” Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

More than 700 concise biographies of leading figures in the history of American law, from the colonial era to the present day This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law. Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others--the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself. Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains. Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law: John Ashcroft Robert H. Bork Bill Clinton Ruth Bader Ginsburg Patrick Henry J. Edgar Hoover James Madison Thurgood Marshall Sandra Day O'Connor Janet Reno Franklin D. Roosevelt Julius and Ethel Rosenberg John T. Scopes O. J. Simpson Alexis de Tocqueville Scott Turow And more than 700 others ]]>

“Lewis P. Simpson.” The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 9, Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.


Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here. Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.

Editor, “Our Trust is in the God of Battles”: The Civil War Letters of Robert F. Bunting, Chaplain, Terry’s Texas Rangers, C.S.A. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. (“Voices of the Civil War Series,” Peter Carmichael, general editor.)

Robert Franklin Bunting was a Princeton-educated chaplain who served in the Confederate 8th Texas Cavalry, popularly known as Terry's Texas Rangers, which saw combat at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga. The manuscript consists primarily of ninety-five letters that Bunting wrote to a variety of Texas newspapers. Designed primarily to describe the unit's movements and actions in detail, the letters also strove to maintain morale as the Confederates' prospects dimmed. Unlike most Civil War soldiers, Bunting wrote with the explicit purpose of publishing his correspondence, seeking to influence congregations of civilians on the home front just as he had done when he lectured them from the pulpit before the Civil War. Bunting's letters cover military actions in great detail, yet they were also like sermons, filled with inspiring rhetoric that turned fallen soldiers into Christian martyrs, Yankees into godless abolitionist hordes, and Southern women into innocent defenders of home and hearth. As such, the public nature of Bunting's writings gives the reader an exceptional opportunity to see how Confederates constructed the ideal of a Southern soldier. Taken as a whole, the letters provide a glimpse into a little-understood aspect of Civil War historiography: the way in which religion influenced the ideology of soldiers and civilians. They also provide a rare first-person perspective on the role of the chaplain in the Confederate Army. Finally, Bunting's letters display an example of successful wartime propaganda: the consistent optimism maintained in the letters doubtless encouraged soldiers in the ill-fated Army of the Tennessee to remain in the ranks for four long years.

“Huey Long’s University” in Shepherd, S. C., & University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Center for Louisiana Studies. (2005). New orleans and urban louisiana (Ser. The louisiana purchase bicentennial series in louisiana history, v. 14). Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

“My Boys at LSU” in Shepherd, S. C., & University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Center for Louisiana Studies. (2005). New orleans and urban louisiana (Ser. The louisiana purchase bicentennial series in louisiana history, v. 14). Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

“The Baton Rouge Agrarians” in Mathé Allain, ed., Louisiana Literature and Literary Figures, Volume XVII in the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History. Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana Center for Louisiana Studies, 2004.

Parnassus on the Mississippi: The Southern Review and the Baton Rouge Literary Community, 1935-1942. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984, 2002. (“Southern Literary Series,” Louis D. Rubin, gen. ed.)


Parnassus on the Mississippi is a history of the short-lived yet remarkable productive epoch when, in the words of C. Vann Woodward, ?the center of the avant-garde of American literary criticism shifted temporarily to the banks of the Mississippi at Baton Rouge.? Beginning with the establishment of the Southern Review at Louisiana State University in 1935, Baton Rouge became the home not only to a brand of criticism that would reshape the teaching of literature in America but also to a community of scholars and artists that included Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, and Peter Taylor. Thomas Cutrer chronicles how the Southern Review, created in the midst of the Depression by the largess of Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, quickly rose to the position of the finest American literary journal of its day. Under the joint editorship of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, the journal published criticism, poetry, and short fiction by writers as eminent as R.P. Blackmur, Kenneth Burke, T.S. Elliot, and Wallace Stevens. The editors also encouraged and published works by such young talented, and at the time unknown writers as Nelson Algren, Randall Jarrell, Mary McCarthy, and Eudora Welty. During these same years, Brooks and Warren collaborated on three textbooks?An Approach to Literature, Understanding Poetry, and Understanding Fiction?which would revolutionize college English by emphasizing the study of a literary work itself, in concrete and precise terms, over the study of the biographical, historical, and moral issues surrounding it. Brooks also wrote his influential critical works Modern Poetry and Tradition and The Well Wrought Urn, while Warren wrote two novels and some of his finest poems and stories, and absorbed material from the political tumult around him for the work that would later become All the King?s Men. The stature of the Southern Review and the vitality of the literary community that it spawned were both, to a great extent, born of the dedication and creativity of Books and Warren, but in other very tangible ways, they were also by-products of the ambition of Huey Long; ironically, it was the actions of one of the assassinated governor?s loyalists that brought an end to Baton Rouge?s time as a Parnassus. After a financial scandal rocked the university, a reform administration was appointed which, in its zeal to curb a runaway budget, stopped the funding for the review. Soon after, Brooks and Warren both left the faculty. The Southern Review itself would lie dormant until its revival two decades later.

“The Confederate Army.” The Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.


With more than 1,100 entries written by some 500 distinguished contributors, The Oxford Companion to American Military History is "the most comprehensive treatment of American military history ever compiled" (Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly) and an "easy-to-browse, well-organized work" (The Washington Post). Here is a gold mine of information on American military history, exploring battles and soldiers, ships and weapons, services and doctrines--as well as the social and cultural impact of the U.S. military at home and around the world. The Oxford Companion to American Military History boasts over 1,100 entries written by some 500 distinguished contributors. Readers will find Stephen E. Ambrose writing on the D-Day landing, James M. McPherson on the battle of Antietam, John Keegan on the changing experience of combat, Jean Bethke Elshtain on Jane Addams, Mark A. Noll on religion and war, and Robert M. Utley on Sitting Bull. Ranging from brief factual pieces to extensive essays, the entries examine every major war from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf; important battles from Bunker Hill, to the Alamo, Gettysburg, Little Bighorn, Normandy, and Khe Sanh; and military leaders from Washington to Grant, Lee, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Westmoreland, and Schwarzkopf. Moreover, the Companion goes well beyond the usual "drum and trumpet" coverage to examine a wide range of subjects you might not expect to find. There are entries on relevant acts of Congress and on diplomatic policies such as the Monroe Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; on peace and antiwar movements; on war in film, literature, music, and photography; and on war viewed through the disciplinary lenses of anthropology, economics, gender studies, and psychology. The result is the widest ranging account compiled in one volume of war, peace, and the U.S. military. With over a thousand authoritative and vividly written entries, maps of several major wars, extensive cross-referencing, lists of further readings, and an index, this volume is the first place to turn for information on our nation's military history.

“James Gillpatrick Blunt” and “Francis Jay Herron.” American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.


American National Biography is the first new comprehensive biographical dicionary focused on American history to be published in seventy years. Produced under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, the ANB contains over 17,500 profiles on historical figures written by an expert in the field and completed with a bibliography. The scope of the work is enormous--from the earlest recorded European explorations to the very recent past.

“Winfield Scott.” John Mack Faragher, ed., American Heritage Encyclopedia of American History. Guilford, Conn.: Sachem Publishing Associates, Inc., 1998.


Introducing the new standard in American history. The most authoritative single-volume encyclopedia of American history in twenty-five years, this groundbreaking reference has been a major undertaking prepared under the guidance of an advisory board of six prominent historians from around the country and of General Editor John Mack Faragher of Yale University. More than 125 contributors, all experts in their fields, present the best in recent scholarship, spanning the pre-Columbian period through the 1990s. The result is substantially different from anything that has come before. * Nearly 3,000 alphabetically arranged entries and essays * Complete and authoritative treatment of traditional subjects * Full coverage of topics at the forefront of American history scholarship today--women, African Americans, Native Americans, family life, urban history, and popular culture * 400 black-and-white illustrations throughout * Appendixes and time charts of American history * Comprehensive cross-references and index for ease of reference, as well as innovative "topic guides" to facilitate deeper exploration and study * Sponsored by American Heritage magazine, the nation's premier history publication

Cutrer, T. W., & Parrish, T. M. (1997). Brothers in gray : the civil war letters of the pierson family. Louisiana State University Press.


Residents of antebellum northwest Louisiana held strong pro-Union sentiments, and the Pierson family of Bienville Parish, Louisiana, were no exception, opposing secession in 1861. Yet once war began, the region contributed its full share of support to the southern army, and four of William H. Pierson's eight sons enlisted. Ranging from the early battles of the Trans-Mississippi to the epic battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, and from the brutal trenches of Vicksburg to provost guard duty in north Louisiana, this extensive collection of Civil War letters, written by three of the Pierson brothers, offers riveting glimpses of almost every variety of experience faced by Confederate soldiers. Prolific letter writers, the Piersons were educated, observant, and well placed to comment not only on the battles and campaigns of their regiments but also on their commanding officers, the effect of political activity on soldier morale, being taken captive, and, most of all, their entire family's understanding of and commitment to the Confederate cause.

“Winfield Scott,” “Ben McCulloch,” “John Coffee Hays,” and “Scott’s Armistice” in Donald Frazer, ed. The United States and Mexico at War: Nineteenth-Century Expansion and Conflict. New York: Macmillan Company, 1997.

Introduction to "Terry Texas Ranger Trilogy": The Civil War Memoirs of J. K. P. Blackburn, L. B. Giles, and E. S. Dodd, Eighth Texas Cavalry. Austin: State House Press, 1996.

Editor, Longstreet’s Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J. Goree. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. (“A Nation Divided Series,” James I. Robertson, gen. ed.)


One of the Confederacy's most loyal adherents and articulate advocates was Lieutenant Grant James Longstreet's aide-de-camp, Thomas Jewett Goree. Present at Longstreet's headquarters and party to the counsels of Robert E. Lee and his lieutenants, Goree wrote incisively on matters of strategy and politics and drew revealing portraits of Longstreet, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard, John Bell Hood, J.E.B. Stuart, and others of Lee's inner circle. His letters are some of the richest and most perceptive from the Civil War period. Thomas Cutrer has collected all of Goree's wartime correspondence to his family, as well as his travel diary from June-August 1865. With its wide scope and rich detail, Longstreet's Aide represents an invaluable addition to the Civil War letter collections published in recent years. While Goree's letters will fascinate Civil War buffs, they also provide a unique opportunity for scholars of social and military history to witness from inside the workings of both an extended Southern family and the forces of the Confederacy.

Introduction to reprint edition of William Watson, Life in the Confederate Army. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995.

Cutrer, T. W. (1993). Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. (“Civil War America Series,” Gary W. Gallagher, gen. ed.)


[A] well-written, comprehensively researched biography.--Publishers Weekly "Will both edify the scholar while captivating and entertaining the general reader. . . . Cutrer's research is impeccable, his prose vigorous, and his life of McCulloch likely to remain the standard for many years.--Civil War "A well-crafted work that makes an important contribution to understanding the frontier military tradition and the early stages of the Civil War in the West.--Civil War History "A penetrating study of a man who was one of the last citizen soldiers to wear a general's stars.--Blue and Gray "A brisk narrative filled with colorful quotations by and about the central figure. . . . Will become the standard biography of Ben McCulloch.--Journal of Southern History "A fast-paced, clearly written narrative that does full justice to its heroically oversized subject.--American Historical Review

“Stark Young,” The Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gayle Research, 1991, Volume CII, 387-93.

A collection of biographical and critical essays on American short story writers, 1910-1945. The main essay on each author provides a chronological discussion of the author's life, works and critical reception.

“Ben McCulloch,” in William C. Davis, ed., The Confederate General. Harrisburg, Pa.: The National Historical Society, 1991, IV, 116-19.

“Violence on the Southern Frontier.” Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, eds., The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

“Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, eds., The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Introduction, Defenders of the Republic of Texas: Texas Army Muster Rolls. Austin: Laurel House Press, 1989.

Cutrer, Thomas W, Center for Studies in Military History, University of North Texas, & National Guard Association of Texas. (1989). "My wild hunt after indians," : the journal of willis l. lang, 23 april-7 september 1860. University of North Texas in cooperation with the Center for Studies in Military History and the National Guard Association of Texas.

Editor and Introduction, reprint edition of Henry W. Graber, A Terry’s Texas Ranger. Austin: State House Press, 1987.

“The Comanche,” “Indian Wars,” and “Katherine Anne Porter” in Archie McDonald, ed. The Texas Experience. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986.

The English Texans. San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1986.