Paul Foos’s Short, Offhand, Killing Affair explores American social conflict against the backdrop of the Mexican-American War. Foos directs his attention to American enlisted soldiers, employing “alternative perspectives” gleaned from their experiences and words to shed light on the broader issues of Jacksonian politics and patronage, Herrenvolk democracy, racial relations, and emergent capitalism (p. 4). In doing so, Foos aims to reassert the often overlooked working-class viewpoints of the common soldier. He finds that many soldiers believed themselves cheated by recruiters’ and politicians’ hollow promises of land, riches, and power to be had in the newly won territories. They chafed under what they considered the arbitrary and unjust imposition of military discipline and often lashed out against the army and against Mexican civilians. According to Foos, the “war of 1846– 48 provided Americans with a venue to confront their own internal conflicts as they fought a war . . ....
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