If you take the 150 or so pages of this book that were actually about the war, I would have given it a higher rating. But the first third of the book consists of the Whites explaining to the Sacs that the forms they signed meant that they had given up their lands and agreed to move to Iowa while the Sacs insisted that they never signed them or, if they did, they didn't mean it. This went back and forth, back and forth. Throughout the entire book, Eckert includes every letter that every participant in the war sent during the entire year. It's like he felt that since his research had uncovered the letter, he deserved to include it. 95% of these letters dealt with nonessential details and repetitions covered in the occasional passages that weren't letters. A huge section toward the end dealt with Wilfield Scott attempting to bring an army to the war but being prevented by a cholera outbreak and not arriving until the war was over. In past books in the series, I didn't mind Eckert's attempts to tell history in story form, but here, because the book was already so packed with fluff, I wasn't in the mood to read that General Atkinson sat back in his chair, yawned, and thought of his wife before writing yet another letter. Seriously, this story could have been adequately and comprehensively told in less than 200 pages.