By Ted Tunnell. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Pp. [xviii], 326. $34.95, ISBN 0-8071-2659-4.)

After Ted Tunnell's excellent work in editing Marshall Twitchell's memoirs (Carpetbagger from Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell [Baton Rouge, 1989]), readers eagerly anticipated this complete biography. Happily, the present volume exceeds expectations, and the result is a superb study of Reconstruction. Tunnell's extensive knowledge of the era's politics provides the perfect context for understanding the Twitchell saga. In addition to years of meticulous archival and newspaper research, several serendipitous sources strengthen the product: the records of the Mercantile Agency, a New York firm that provided credit assessments of the budding entrepreneurs of Twitchell's parish of residence; a previously unknown account (handwritten by Twitchell in 1875) of the White League's activities; additional family letters; and, of course, the autobiography itself, written with some bitterness at the turn of the twentieth century, even as the Dunning School's version of Reconstruction years was taking hold.

Tunnell follows Twitchell's...