Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). This is currently the leading overview of the Kansas civil war from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act through the national Civil War.

Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender, and Violence in Pre–Civil War Kansas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009). Oertel covers the role played by women, African Americans, and Native Americans in the political and military conflict in Bleeding Kansas.