The effects of the Civil War on Civilian life in Texas are powerfully conveyed in the correspondence of Dr. Gideon Lincecum (1793-1874), a natural scientist and philosopher who moved to Texas in 1848 with his family of ten children and settled in Washington County. This body of correspondence, ably edited by the collaborative efforts of Jerry Bryan Lincecum, Edward hake Phillips, and Peggy A. Redshaw, is gathered together in Gideon Lincecum's Sword: Civil War Letters From The Texas Home Front and forms a strongly recommended, powerfully vivid, and informatively welcome addition to Civil War studies reference collections and reading lists.