November 29, 2011

Time for a Celebratory Cigar

I'm thrilled to announce that the final draft of my new work has been completed. As I've mentioned before, its working title is "Old Slow Town:" A Social, Political and Military History of Detroit during the Civil War. I turned the manuscript in to Detroit's very own Wayne State University Press earlier this week which means the peer review process now begins. If all goes as hoped, we should be looking at a Spring 2013 pub. date.

This was quite a challenging book as the various social and political issues heavily present in Civil War-era Detroit, i.e. draft resistance, race relations and labor unrest, all required a significant amount of analysis and study. Such home front issues were simply not pertinent in my past works. Plus, it was quite interesting to learn how concerns over street violence coupled with the fear of Confederate raids from Canada affected the local military authorities.

By the way, the caption to this August, 1863 Harpers Weekly draft cartoon is "Don't you see the point?" Indeed.

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