| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War. By Paul Foos. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 223 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95, cloth; $18.95, paper.)

This study of the United States-Mexican War presents "alternative perspectives" through the use of "newly uncovered and long-ignored sources." Foos uses first-person narratives of participants in the war to offer "commentary that eschews the heroic mode so common in personal and public accounts of the 1840s" (p. 4). The war affected few Americans, but it caused "controversy, changed the political and social climate, and inspired decisive action and much commentary from those who served in the military or helped recruit armies for Mexico" (p. 4). By examining the acts of soldiers and their writings, Foos demonstrates the brutality and racism inherent in the Mexican War and uses the war as a "lens through which to view American society and thought in the 1840s" (p. 9). To provide an understanding of what affect the war had on American society, he explains the military organization and philosophies of the regular army and the volunteer militia.

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