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BOOK REVIEWS73 of 1 846 to 1 848. His study treats both regular and volunteer organizations, general officers and privates, to find that the army was truly reflective of its time. In the tradition of Bell I. Wiley, Winders explores the everyday life of the common soldier, revealing predictable complaints of arduous marches, bad food, and periods of relentless boredom. Officers expressed similar complaints. Throughout the war regulars displayed open contempt for volunteers, while volunteers had little regard for the professionals, especially West Pointers. Perhaps not so predictable, as Winders observes, was that many soldiers exhibited a keen political awareness. And this was a most political war. Whig critics condemned it as further evidence of Jacksonian expansionism, an effort to secure new lands for slavery. Democrats saw it, among other things, as a path to continued political dominance in the United States. The war gave President James K. Polk the opportunity to appoint loyal or influential Democrats as volunteer generals, and the rivalry between Whigs and Democrats became a major aspect of the war. But military victory in Mexico and the addition of vast lands to the United States, as it turned out, failed the Democrats at the ballot box in 1 848, when Polk's nemesis , Zachary Taylor, won the presidency for the Whigs. Winders ably describes the development of an American military establishment during a time of intense political turmoil and how it reflected the era. His command of the subject and its source material is most impressive; interested scholars should find his notes and bibliography of great value. Also highly useful are numerous tables and illustrations. For its relative brevity, this is a remarkably comprehensive book. In a clear and concise fashion, Winders manages to include a wealth of information. His lively narrative and eye for the entertaining should appeal to specialists and general readers alike. Mr. Polk'sArmy captures the MexicanWar's considerable uniqueness and affords its American participants an identity of their own. This is a major contribution to Mexican War and U.S. military historiography. David Coffey Texas Christian University Beating Plowshares Into Swords: The Political Economy ofAmerican Warfare, 1606-1865. By Paul A. C. Koistinen. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xi, 376. $39.95) For years, scholars have written about wars and, in particular, America's way of waging wars, but rarely have scholars studied the way the United States mobilized itself for war. Paul A. C. Koistinen tackles this topic in the first of an ambitious five-volume study that analyzes the political economy of war. According to the author's Preface, the volume attempts to "demonstrate the impact ofthe political economy of warfare upon domestic life and what economic mobilization for defense and war reveals about the nature and operations of society" (xiii). 74CIVIL WAR HISTORY Koistinen divides his book into two parts. Part I discusses what he terms the "pre-industrial phase" of warfare. The American Revolution is the focus of this section. For Koistinen, the mobilization for the American Revolution was the most complex in American history because "the process of warfare created the nation" (? i). The Mexican War, and especially the American Civil War, represent the transitional phase between the preindustrial and industrial stages ofwar mobilization. Although the title indicates that the volume begins with the colonial era, the book, in fact, starts with the Revolution. But the main focus is on the Civil War period. Indeed, the author devotes six of his ten chapters to the mobilization efforts, both military and civilian, ofthe Union and the Confederacy. Koistinen's argument is not particularly new or revisionist. Rather, he has synthesized an enormous amount of literature on war mobilization. For example, his coverage of Confederate mobilization echoes the work of Richard Goff, Robert C. Black III, and Douglas Ball. Although he states in his notes that he utilized primary sources extensively, the citations are composed overwhelmingly of secondary literature. Still, those notes are invaluable, for they approximate a bibliographic essay (in the absence of a comprehensive bibliography). Koistinen states that his research interests he in the twentieth century and that he views nineteenth-century warfare and its political economy from a twentiethcentury perspective. That bias is...

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