The Civil War's First Blood: Missouri, 1854-1861

Jim Denny and John Bradbury are the authors of The Civil War's First Blood: Missouri, 1854-1861, published by Missouri Life Magazine and distributed by the University of Missouri Press.  The book is a comprehensive view of the Civil War in Missouri through the end of the tumultuous year, 1861.  First Blood will appeal to general audiences as well as Civil War enthusiasts.  Heretofore a number of books and articles had to be consulted to obtain an overall view of the way the war unfolded in Missouri and to get a sense of how fast things developed in this critical border state.  The Civil War's First Blood tells the story in a single narrative. 

The book is lavishly illustrated with illustrations from the Library of Congress, the State Historical Society of Missouri, the Missouri Historical Society and other wartime sources.

Jim Denny is an historian with Missouri's Department of Natural Resources.  He is the coauthor, with James D. Harlan of the Atlas of Lewis and Clark in Missouri, published by the University of Missouri Press.  He has also written articles on Missouri’s vernacular architecture, the Civil War, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the state, as well as other topics.  John Bradbury is senior manuscript specialist with the Rolla branch of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection.  He has published numerous books and articles on the history of Phelps County and the Civil War in the Ozarks, and with Lou Wehmer, co-edited a modern reprint of William Monks’s Civil War memoir, A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, published by the University of Arkansas Press.

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