Bruce, I'll second Ken's sentiments. Having been in the writing trenches myself and having been burned when I first started the serious study of the Civil War in Missouri almost fifteen years ago, I will provide my own insights into this issue.

When a new book comes out on the war in the Trans-Mississippi, before I buy it I will leaf through the bibliography. If it shows a lot of secondary sources and few or no primary sources then I'll set it back down and quickly move on, unless I am looking for analysis. Because that is exactly what it is if it relies upon secondary sources--analysis.

Nothing is more aggravating than seeing a book being marketed as "new research" when what it really is is a different slant on, or a rebuttal of, 20th and 21st century published sources. Calling analysis "new research" is nothing more than new bs. Analysis is an extremely valuable tool--call it what it is, and I'll give it a huge amount of consideration. Call it what it isn't and try to bootleg it onto my own bookshelves, and it calls into question the entire premise of the book.

And if a work does list primary sources, then I'll leaf through footnotes/endnotes to see how often those primary sources are showing up in the body of the work. Sometimes a new book will be top heavy with primary sources in the bibliography, when the footnotes will be almost all secondary sources. That one also has to be categorized as analysis.

And if the book doesn't have a bibliography or footnotes or otherwise provide sources (and, my goodness, sources that can be found!!!) and bills itself as being non-fiction, forget it--there's been a bit too much "you'll just have to take my word for it" "nonfiction" floating around Civil War Missouri bookshelves. If the research was done then what is the problem with letting us in on it? And if we aren't being let in on it, that sends a message in and of itself whether it is the intended message or not.

The state of affairs was so bad that at one point it was referred to on the national stage as being a "scholarly black hole"--a perception which we all have to work our hardest to overcome. I would say that with just one or two exceptions, that era of historiography appears to have pretty much passed us by, and that there have been some very exceptional works coming out in recent years. Bruce, a big pat on the back to you for leading the way in showing us how good historiography looks.