Paul N. Beck

Although I thought that there was a lot of virtue in Pekka Hamalainen's study of the wider Lakota nation, it is to be admitted that it is not at its strongest when dealing with military matters. As such, Beck's study of the follow-up to the Sioux War of 1862, while a little dry, I found to be very informative. This is as Beck goes to some lengths not to treat the punitive expeditions as a sideshow to the greater war between Richmond and Washington, but as an integral component of larger strategic concerns. Though it's hard to avoid concluding that John Pope was looking for personal compensation for his military failures back east. Beck also works at giving the reader some insight to the perspective of the fighting men on the ground, between those Lakota/Dakota fighters trying to stave off the onrush of the White Man, those soldiers of Minnesota who wanted personal revenge, and other soldiers of the U.S. Army who, on the whole, would have preferred to have fought in what they considered the "real" war.… (meer)