false 1283566 9 <p>An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War.<br><br>During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today&#8217;s population would be six million.<i> This Republic of Suffering</i> explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. The eminent historian Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation and its understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. She describes how survivors mourned and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God, pondered who should die and under what circumstances, and reconceived its understanding of life after death.<br><br>Faust details the logistical challenges involved when thousands were left dead, many with their identities unknown, on the fields of places like Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. She chronicles the efforts to identify, reclaim, preserve, and bury battlefield dead, the resulting rise of undertaking as a profession, the first widespread use of embalming, the gradual emergence of military graves registration procedures, the development of a federal system of national cemeteries for Union dead, and the creation of private cemeteries in the South that contributed to the cult of the Lost Cause. She shows, too, how the war victimized civilians through violence that extended beyond battlefields&#8212;from disease, displacement, hardships, shortages, emotional wounds, and conflicts connected to the disintegration of slavery.<br><br>Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, and nurses, of northerners and southerners, slaveholders and freedpeople, of the most exalted and the most humble are brought together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War&#8217;s most fundamental and widely shared reality. <br><br>Were he alive today,<i> This Republic of Suffering</i> would compel Walt Whitman to abandon his certainty that the &#8220;real war will never get in the books.&#8221;</p> 2933645 8 1 2008 This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War total:470|5:141|4:185|3:119|2:21|1:4| 470 1848 1075 147 3 9 false false Sun Jun 15 12:52:43 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 16 13:10:12 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Jul 14 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Nov 22 14:08:35 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 22 14:08:35 -0800 2008
This book considers aspects of death an...more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Feb 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 11:17:40 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 13:45:46 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 2 false false Thu Mar 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 07 20:57:00 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 13 18:12:23 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Aug 16 03:28:53 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 13 06:34:37 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 03:28:53 -0700 2008 The Republic of Suffering is a necessary, and long overdue, cultural history of a largely ignored aspect of the Civil War. Basically, it’s a history of Death on a massive scale in what many historians view as the first modern war, and how society (or societies – North and...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Mar 17 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Feb 11 03:22:42 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 17 04:35:47 -0700 2008
An estimated 620,000 soldiers were shot, blown apart by cannon fire, or...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Feb 02 11:37:59 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 26 13:07:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 27 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jan 28 17:53:32 -0800 2008 Fri Jun 27 07:49:27 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 15 00:58:40 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 01 21:56:17 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Jun 26 10:59:48 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 26 11:04:58 -0700 2008
Dying
Killing
B...more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Sep 03 16:26:55 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 16:27:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed May 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 12:13:52 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 12:29:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:56:11 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:56:11 -0800 2009 Those who fret over the state of American universities will embrace this history by Drew Gilpin Faust. Academics appreciate how Faust explains so many social and cultural changes by recentering the story of the war on its massive toll in lives: the estimated 2 percent who died, or 620,000, would be ...

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The books discusses several topics related to death and the war, including th...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Apr 15 15:59:38 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 18:14:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Dec 11 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 27 23:02:04 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 12 14:37:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Aug 07 13:08:13 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 13:14:51 -0700 2009
Pre-Civil-War Americans sought "The Good Death" - to die ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Nov 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 04 19:19:09 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 20 19:32:25 -0800 2008 more...]]>