Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama by Jennifer E. Brooks

book appears to present itself as the tome about the Civil War that animal scholars have awaited for years, something genuinely interdisciplinary. However, the collection is not rich in methodology, and, to damn it with Hess’ own faint praise, it too contains “a lot of easily digested information.” Each of the chapters, however, is a stellar example of traditional research, delving into primary materials that are both clear and engaging. Michael E. Woods’ opening essay, “Antebellum Camel Capers and the Global Slave Power,” is a masterful example of storytelling. Yet, it does not mention other historians until the last three paragraphs, and it is not particularly interdisciplinary, except for a paragraph that mentions a novel. One exception in terms of interdisciplinary work is Mark Smith’s chapter “All the Buzz: Why Bees Mattered in the Civil War,” which discusses theory, quotes other historians, and has an economics slant. A book entitled Animal Histories of the Civil War Era might have engaged more with the historical wartime poetry involving animals or the use of animals in political cartoons and in popular music and literature, let alone with historiography or theory. Not even when discussing vegetarianism does the book draw much from the insights of current animal-ethics scholars. Although far from the interdisciplinary study that Hess promised, the book is a must-read within its particular field, and, to the editor’s unwitting disapproval, possibly for its “easily digested information.”