The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956 Page: 522

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

dier's Letters to Charming Nellie. The one hundred and thirty
volumes of The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, which
deal with affairs in Texas, are not referred to either in the foot-
notes or the bibliography.
The author has done a prodigious amount of research on a
prosaic topic and has put together a worthwhile book. The type
is clear and readable; the dust jacket is attractively done; and
the book has the usual Naylor quality.
CLAUDE ELLIOTT
Southwest Texas State Teachers College
The Great Plains in Transition. By Carl Frederick Kraenzel.
Norman (University of Oklahoma Press), 1955. Pp. 389. $5.oo.
In The Great Plains in Transition, Carl F. Kraenzel has defined
the Great Plains as the semiarid region located east of the Rocky
Mountains and west of the ninety-eighth meridian. His book thus
concerns large portions of Montana, North and South Dakota,
Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
and Texas. The plains of Texas constitute about one-third of
Kraenzel's Great Plains region.
Plains people will find the author to be a sympathetic friend;
he is sincerely interested in their problems. He does not, how-
ever, offer easy solutions. Instead, the author says that a funda-
mental change is required; that Plains people can solve their
problems only if they change their humid-area ideas and insti-
tutions, which invaded from the East and were kept without
change.
Kraenzel's work is primarily a sociological treatment of the
Plains area. The book, however, also contains sections about the
history, climate, topography, soils, and plant and animal life of
the Great Plains. These sections enable the reader to understand
why moisture varies from year to year, and why this fact creates
special problems for the people of the Plains area.
After relating ample background information, the author fol-
lows this plan: (1) he evaluates the success that Plains Indians
and other inhabiting groups have experienced in adapting them-
selves to the conditions of semiaridity; (2) he shows that humid-

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