Book Notes

Squire Boone and Nicholas Meriwether: Kentucky Pioneers. By Ronald R. Van Stockum Sr. (Louisville: Merrick Printing Company, 2010. Pp. xxii, 114. $29.00 cloth.)

This volume, collected from the historical columns written by the author for the Shelbyville Sentinel-News, provides a very readable narrative of the frontier era of Shelby County through the biographies of two individuals. It chronicles the familiar themes of war and land squabbles, and contains a useful set of maps and illustrations that help situate eighteenth-century Shelby County within the modern landscape. Copies are available from the author at 4161 Zaring Mill Road, Shelbyville, Kentucky, 40065.

Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802-1920. By Estill Curtis Pennington. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Pp. xxiii, 252. $50.00 cloth)

This oversized book is bursting with portraits of and by Kentuckians in the nineteenth century. Pennington has compiled works from an impressive number of institutions to create a fascinating gallery on the page. More useful, still, are his introduction, commentary, and artist biographies which interpret the relationship between portraiture produced in Kentucky and national (even international) technique and taste. It is as suited to be a reference work for historians as it is a collection of wonderful historic art.

Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War. By Gail Stevens. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2010. Pp. xiii, 301. $27.95 cloth)

This biography of the noted Union general will be of particular interest to those who hope to sort out the chaotic fighting at Shiloh. Though Stevens includes useful sections on Wallace's early life and later military career, the battle in West Tennessee looms large over this oversized volume as the title implies. The book is packed with maps, portraits, and illustrations, and addresses many of the accusations hurled at the man who was (and is) dismissed as simply a political general.

American Military History: A Documentary Reader. Edited by Brad D. Lookingbill. (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Pp. xiv, 376. $99.95 cloth; $49.95 paper)

Compiling documents from American military personnel from the colonial era to the global war on terror, this volume is intended to be a text for ROTC courses. It includes questions to prompt discussion as well as a list of suggested readings to support the documents and chapters. Military-history enthusiasts outside of the classroom, though, might still value this as a prime collection of military voices over the course of American history.