The long agony was over: Kansas, as of January 29, 1861, was a state–it had moved to America. In Leavenworth, Lawrence, Topeka, and other towns Kansans celebrated the glorious news of the coming of statehood in a fury of excitement. Cannons boomed, cheering crowds gathered on the street corners, a judge and a militia general stood on their heads, and the saloons were scenes of inebriated revelry. So begins Albert Castel’s classic history of Kansas during the Civil War. Long recognized as a key study on the war in the trans-Mississippi West, Civil War Kansas describes the political, military, social, and economic events of the state’s first four years. Castel contributes to a better understanding of the Civil War in this region through a realistic presentation and analysis of the Kansas-Missouri border conflict, the operations of the Missouri guerrillas under Quantrill, and the Union and Confederate military campaigns in Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and Kansas itself.