Wong's Army The American Military Experience In The Mexican War Summary
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Richard Bruce Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War (Texas, 1997)
The book Mr. Polk’s Army the American Military Experience in the Mexican War was written by Richard Bruce Winders. The book was publish in 1997 by the author. Winders first started writing this book because he found all other books about the Mexican War fell under similar categories that he felt did not explain the account well. He also said he wrote to inform people about the Mexican War because he felt that, at the time of publication, there were not many books about the topic, but he felt that the number of books about the topic would soon greatly increase.
This book focuses on the daily life of soldiers in the Mexican War. Winders gained all of his knowledge from reading diaries and journals. From all of his research, he found a lot of the accounts share very similar experiences. The soldiers were concerned with political issues during the war. The Democrats and Whigs struggled to maintain control in the war because the victory of a political…show more content… When observing Winders use of evidence, I noticed that many accounts are from a factual standpoint. Many of his sources are nonfiction books about accounts that occurred during the Mexican War. When writing about specific events that occur in a character’s life, Winders used a journal or diary source as his evidence, making the book very authentic. Since the book is supposed to be written in the perspective of soldiers he “met” along the way, the usage of primary sources is a good choice because the accounts in the book are things that happened in real life. Some of the sources he quoted were rather long. The bad thing about having long quotes is it makes the reader less interested in the topic the quote is trying to express due to the length. By using such reliable sources, Winders was capable of getting his argument across more clearly because his sources are