His first book on American Civil War guerrilla warfare Executing Daniel Bright: Race, Loyalty, and Guerrilla Violence in a Coastal Carolina Community, 1861-1865 won the 2009 Jules and Frances Landry Award for the best book in southern studies published by LSU Press. He received his MA and PhD in history from the University of Georgia and comes to Texas Tech after holding a postdoctoral fellowship in military history at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Currently, he is working on a second book funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation entitled Rebels Against a Rebellion: Southern Unionists in Secession, War and Remembrance.