The Civil War Era and Reconstruction

Gr 7 Up—Snodgrass includes hundreds of alphabetized entries; primary documents; and four overview essays that survey politics and government, business and industry, foreign affairs, and family and society. A topic finder groups the material into 19 categories such as biographies, education, family life, military affairs, politics, science, transportation, and Native Americans. Each entry is cross-referenced and offers suggestions for further reading, and some feature sidebars, graphs, and/or captioned black-and-white photographs or illustrations. Unfortunately, information is repeated throughout and the author's use of certain wording might be offensive to some readers. For example, she uses the phrase "half-breed" and refers to the "horse-thieving" Cheyenne and "horse-eating" Apache. There are also numerous factual errors. Ivy League-educated geologist Clarence King is referred to as a mountain-man, which he was not; the Great Sioux Reservation is in South Dakota and Nebraska, not Montana; and Nebraska's Fort Kearney was not built in 1866.—Patricia Ann Owens, Illinois Eastern Community Colleges