Volume two of The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie features her correspondence with Margaret Holford Hodson, Lady Byron, Mary Montgomery, and Anna Jameson. Other letters reveal her respect and admiration for Sir Walter Scott, as well as her connections to American writers and theologians living in the Boston area in the early-to-mid 1800s. The book includes much of the biographical evidence missing in previous portraits of Joanna Baillie but essential for future critical inquiry.

Civil War historians shed new light on the importance of guerrilla combat across the south in this “useful and fascinating work” (Choice). Touching states from Virginia to New Mexico, guerrilla warfare played a significant yet underexamined role in the Civil War. Guerrilla fighters fought for both the Union and the Confederacy—as well as their own ethnic groups, tribes, or families. They were deadly forces that plundered, tortured, and terrorized those in their path, and their impact is not yet fully understood. This richly diverse volume assembles a team of both rising and eminent scholars to examine guerrilla warfare in the South during the Civil War. Together, they discuss irregular combat as practiced by various communities in multiple contexts, including how it was used by Native Americans, the factors that motivated raiders in the border states, and the women who participated as messengers, informants, collaborators, and combatants. They also explore how the Civil War guerrilla has been mythologized in history, literature, and folklore.

Speaking out of twenty-seven years of pastoral ministry, Ian Stackhouse writes a series of letters to a young pastor just starting out. Responding to the various challenges his young charge faces in the first few years of congregational leadership, Letters to a Young Pastor is something of a spiritual reflection on leadership in the context of Christian ministry. To say that the letters are addressed to a fictitious pastor is not to say that the issues are unreal. Letters to a Young Pastor addresses matters that anyone in leadership eventually has to face. It seeks to offer encouragement and practical wisdom, but also an insight into the inner world of a person wrestling with the demands of a vocational life. In this sense, Letters to a Young Pastor has relevance to anyone who is seeking to remain faithful to a calling, whether ecclesial or not, in a world dominated by consumerism, formulas, and success.