Professional historians and lay readers alike will be glad to have this 800-page documentary collection compiled and edited by Kenneth L. Alford. If in ways atypical for its genre, the volume will be helpful to scholars who need quick and nearly comprehensive access to official Union correspondence pertaining to Utah and the surrounding region for the years of the Civil War. Since the Civil War, western history, and Mormon history attract popular readerships, the book will also no doubt delight some looking for fine-grained, firsthand accounts, even if it will prove too bulky for beach reading on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
The volume contains two main sections as well as a detailed opening summary of Utah's history during the Civil War, an introduction to the sources and method of compiling the volume, and a series of appendices. The first main section, the larger of the two, consists...
