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Next time, do so.

I'm sorry, I didn't think, given the context, that it was necessary, and I still don't.

Again, you come down to facts - not addressing the issue. Historical facts can be known with varying degrees of certainty. Yes we can be virtually certain of the main details of Lincoln's assassination. Concerning the issue raised on this forum the other day of whether or not Lincoln issued a warrant for Taney's arrest, it is probably beyond our power to know. But your criticism of the Thornton-Ekelund book was not about facts, it was about interpretation. Like the example I gave of the depression. I notice that you didn't address that example at all. Your final statement refers to "factual" historical accounts. But few historians are content with merely factual accounts. They also interpret and "explain". Two interpretive-explanatory accounts can both be logically consistent, consistent with all the known facts and relevent laws or principles (economic, sociological, etc.) and still be quite different. How would you distinguish the true from the false? Or prove the supposedly true one true. Interpretive-explanatory accounts are of necessity ideologically grounded.

You are right, but people who insert their 21st century PC worldview and agenda into an 19th century event - is just plain bias. Such books do have some true history in them, but the agenda turns me off. The Civil War was not primarily about economics. Period. All one has to do is read any of the congressional debates, diaries, autobiographies from that time, etc., to see that. If economics was a major factor, gosh, wouldn't there be a ton of primary source evidence to back it up? Where is it? Or did the leaders of the north and south fall unwitting prey to their latent economic biases as they marched inexorably off to war? I like facts, not speculation, and I certainly don't like political correctness. Usually in interpretive accounts, facts are conveniently omitted that contradict the thesis of the writer. For example, I read an account on the history of the family (written by a couple of PC authors) who subjected the Puritans to their 1980s notions of the evils of patriarchal society and what constitutes child abuse. They cited a statistic that there were something like 70 instances of spousal abuse from 1620-1695 (oooh, what a whopping amount over 75 years!), but were strangely silent on spousal abuse statistics in the 1960s and 70s which would undoubtedly reveal abuse rates 100 times that of the Puritans. I don't like bias. If your authors give a fair treatment to the subject, and they use good sources (primary, not secondary), then perhaps it is worth a read. I should not judge before I read - so at this point, I cannot judge your book at all - I haven't read it.