Kit Carson is the only protagonist in The Three-Cornered War who is well-known outside of the Southwest, and western history. But what most Americans know about him are his actions before the Civil War: his work as a guide for John C. Frémont’s expeditions into the West; his fame as an Indian . . .
Read MoreAlonzo Ferdinand Ickis was the first person I wrote about in The Three-Cornered War. I found his wartime diary in the Western History Collection at the Denver Public Library during my initial research trip for this project, in 2010. It is a small, leather-bound volume, and Ickis wrote over his initial penciled . . .
Read MoreWhy do so few historians talk about the American Civil War in the West? And by “the West” I don’t mean the trans-Mississippi. I mean the vast stretches of high desert and the extensive mountain ranges west of the 100th meridian, where elevation and aridity make everything a bit more difficult: breathing, . . .
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