Foxx, Daniel

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Foxx, Daniel

PERSONAL:

Married; children: four sons. Education: Brigham Young University, B.A., M.A.; doctoral studies at Arizona State University. Religion: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).

ADDRESSES:

Office—Ottawa University, Phoenix Campus, 10020 N. 25th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85021. E-mail—foxxdan@ottawa.edu.

CAREER:

During early career, worked as a chemical company plant manager, animal health company vice president, and a legislative aide for the Arizona State Legislature; Glendale Community College, Phoenix, AZ, former professor of history; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, former faculty member; Ottawa University, Phoenix, associate professor of history, beginning 1982, currently professor of history emeritus. Military service: U.S. Army, 1958-61; served as information specialist.

MEMBER:

Western History Association, Phi Alpha Theta.

WRITINGS:

I Only Laugh When It Hurts, Northwest Publishing, 1995.

(With Eddy W. Davison) Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma, foreword by Edwin C. Bearss, Pelican (Gretna, LA), 2007.

Contributor to book Applying Adult Development Strategies, Josey-Bass Publishers, 1990. Contributor to journals and monographs.

SIDELIGHTS:

Daniel Foxx is a retired history professor who, along with Eddy W. Davison, is the author of Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma, a biography of one of the Confederacy's most brilliant generals. Forrest, however, was also a controversial figure, as well as a complex man to analyze. On the one hand, his tactics in battle often won victories when his men were grossly outnumbered; on the other, he was accused of sometimes killing captured soldiers and civilians for no good reason. A member of the Ku Klux Klan after the war, he also declared in a public speech that African Americans should be allowed to obtain an education.

Reviewers of the biography sometimes felt that Davison and Foxx leave their subject as enigmatic at the end of the book as he was at the beginning, while other critics praised the book as a valuable contribution to Civil War studies. Booklist contributor Roland Green, for instance, faulted the authors for "whitewashing" some of the negative aspects of Forrest's life, while in the Civil War Book Review Web site, James A. Ramage reported that the "authors present little new information, but they succeed in providing a valuable synthesis. Their narrative of Forrest's raids is detailed, clearly written, lively, and entertaining." A Curled Up with a Good Book Web site critic described the work as a "readable and intriguing biography," and an Internet Book Watch contributor declared it "a work of meticulous and detailed scholarship."