Content area
Full text
Prince of Edisto: Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, CSA. By James K. Swisher. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1996. Pp. 188. $25.00.) Defender of the Valley: Brigadier General John D. Imboden, CSA. By Harold R. Woodward Jr. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1996. Pp. 199. $25.00.)
Though biographies of those sometimes called dead white males are often dismissed or ignored by those preferring to emphasize the undeniably significant role of race, class, and gender as determining factors in history, there is little doubt that the genre has produced many of the most influential and most popular titles in Civil War literature. As new biographies of the war's major political and military figures continue to appear, they are joined on bookstore and library shelves by numerous studies of less prominent Union and Confederate personalities. Skeptics might be pardoned for fearing that at some not-too-distant date all 583 Union generals and all 425 Confederate generals will have their lives chronicled in at least one biography, whether needed or not. These two short books from the same publisher-studies of a Confederate brigadier best known for the manner of his death during...