Books: Blue-bellied Yank

GONE TO TEXAS—John W. Thomason.

Jr.—Scribners ($2.75).

Neither during the Civil War nor in Reconstruction times were the successes of the Union forces in Texas anything to brag about. In fact, with its post-Civil War collection of desperate Southern aristocrats, filibusterers and assorted bad men, their plots and generally seditious hell-raising, Texas looked like just the sort of a place for another rebellion to cut loose. Against this hot-blooded, nearly forgotten background, Texas-born U. S. Marine Major John W. Thomason Jr. (Fix Bayonets!, Jeb Stuart), grandson of Longstreet's Chief of Staff, spins the...