Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1995

Publication Title

Great Plains Quarterly

Volume

15

Issue

1

First Page

75

Last Page

76

Abstract

Michael D. Pierce has produced a credible and nicely written interpretation of Ranald Mackenzie's life. By focusing on the frontier years and placing this officer's experiences within the broader context of military events, he provides the reader a good sense of time and place. Pierce also successfully utilizes the standard source materials and moves well beyond Robert G. Carter's somewhat unreliable On the Border with Mackenzie (1935). Unfortunately, the personal dimensions of Mackenzie's thoughts and deeds will never be fully known because he was an intensely private man who left little documentation about himself. Even his official reports tend to be cryptic and matter-of-fact, rather than literary and reflective. Persons interested in frontier military life and the Indian wars will be rewarded by this book, and they should likewise consult a second new work for comparison-Charles M. Robinson's Bad Hand: A Biography of Ranald S. Mackenzie (1993).

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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