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Jun 16, 2008

brian rated it:

you know that very un-scientific statistic that says that the average male thinks about sex once every two minutes? well, if you triple that and replace 'sex' with 'death', that's me. at the age of twelve, i considered suing woody allen for using me as the basis for his character in Hannah and her Sisters. while other kids were stroking it to penthouse, i was rocking back and forth in fetal position from having re-read (for the 50th time) the Grand Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov an More...

16 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2011

Matt rated it:

"Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether More...

0 comments like (15 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2008

David rated it:

It's well known that there were huge numbers of casualties during the Civil War. But what lies behind the numbers? Every single death represents a life - a son, a husband, a brother. What were the faces and feelings and experiences behind the numbers?

This book considers aspects of death and dying and suffering I would never have thought of: the emotions of the soldiers anticipating possible death as they go into battle; the mental or emotional adjustments involved in learning to kill; More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2011

Lizzie rated it:

About America's national PTSD in the wake of the Civil War. More than 600,000 soldiers died - an equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. That doesn't include the wounded, and civilian casualties. Americans had to realize the enormity of what had happened to their country, to every family, to do the work of burying, naming, accounting, and numbering.

Both sides assumed the conflict would last a couple of months. Neither planned for care of the wounded, housing More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2009

trickgnosis rated it:

If I were being mean, I might say that Faust writes like an administrator--she is the president of Harvard--but instead I'll just say that she seems to prefer details to narrative and is reluctant to use just one or two pertinent examples when she can use a half dozen. Occasionally this is effective at indicating the scope of Civil War carnage but often it drags the book down. The chapter on "accounting" is the longest in the book and really slows down the pace in the latter half of th More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2008

Kate rated it:

Very powerful book about the trauma of the Civil War and all of the death it created. Because I had a relative in this war (Thomas Brown, US First Sharpshooter, Company F) who left behind letters of his experiences, I was particularly interested in what Faust had to say. I feel like I now have a fuller picture of his experience of this horrible war. I even wrote Faust a fan letter when I was done.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Steve rated it:

Drew Gilpin Faust’s 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 South) dealt with such losses. There were of course differences in how the North and South did deal with such losses, especially when it came to locating bodies for reburial. For the North, location and r More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2008

Rose rated it:

Civil War historian Drew Gilpin Faust has written an informative and troubling study of how antebellum Americans adopted and shaped a 'Culture of Death' during the bewildering and staggering carnage of the Civil War.

An estimated 620,000 soldiers were shot, blown apart by cannon fire, or killed by botched battlefield operations during the years that the war raged (1861-65). As the author points out, an equivalent proportion of the current U.S. population would be six million losses. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 26, 2008

Kelly rated it:

Harvard president and Civil War scholar Drew Gilpin Faust tackles the most intimate aspects of death during the Civil War in This Republic of Suffering, a groundbreaking new book on the realities of war’s carnage. From the physical bodies on the battlefield, to the “Good Death” and the developing belief in the concept of heaven, to the growth of federal standards for counting and communicating war deaths, Faust delves into aspects of the Civil War that many haven’t considered when thinking about More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 27, 2008

Krista rated it:

Because I don't buy books these days, I am still "currently-reading"this thing, as the library recalled it before I could finish it. However, I have it on hold again and will finish it because the first few chapters I did manage to read before the city of Kansas City plucked the book so meanly from my hands were eminently readable, interesting and thought-provoking.

Ok. Finally read it. Must say that the preface was much more engaging than the book itself. Not that the b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 01, 2008

Sandra D rated it:

I've studied the Civil War pretty intensively in the past, but I came away from this book thinking, "Wow! I never thought about it like that before!" There were gory parts and sad parts and even some boring parts, but, on the whole, it was very well done and I had to give it five stars for the value of the perspective I gained.

Each chapter covers a specific topic: Dying, Killing, Burying, Naming, Realizing, Believing and Doubting, Accounting, and Numbering. I think the chap More...

2 comments like

Jun 26, 2008

Don rated it:

A surprisingly objective look at the effects of war by a Harvard president that deals with the effects of the then unparalelled deaths that ocurred during the Civil War and how the country dealt with them. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the deaths:

Dying
Killing
Burying
Naming
Realizing
Believing and Doubting
Accounting
Numbering
Surviving

At 2% of the population, the Civil War death toll was enormous (equivalent to 6 m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

Quiet is the word that comes to mind to describe the writing of Harvard s first female president on the uncommon subject of death. A quiet regard for the over 600,000 men who perished directly due to the unbelievable carnage of the American Civil War.[return][return]There are thousands upon thousands of books written about that war. I have nearly 100 on my shelves. Some are general histories of the conflict, many are written about specific battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam. All e More...

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Jun 23, 2011

James rated it:

I may have been late to the game, but I wasfinally in it: the hardcover edition of Drew Gilpin Faust's "This Republic of Suffering" had been out for more than a year before I read it...I'm quite glad I did. In fact, though I had it on my shelf for several months, I had delayed reading it, being somewhat put off by both negative *and* fawning reviews. After reading it, I find that the "truth" is somewhere in between.

In short, I enjoyed the book very much. Having p More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Sean rated it:

"This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War" is a timely, well researched historical work about how North and South dealt with mass death during the American Civil War. Written by Drew Faust, President of Harvard University, the book engages with profound questions of how the American Civil War. It's a history of the American Civil War that is not focused on battles and commanders but on what could rightly be termed folk history, how individuals and a nation processed More...

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Dec 10, 2010

Kimberly rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Nov 08, 2009

Emily rated it:

This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust (the president of Harvard, and a woman, FYI) is a history of the Civil War period that focuses on the devastating death toll of the conflict and its effects on American culture of that time and since. The main threads of the discussion include attitudes of the Victorians towards a "good death," fashionable mourning, and the possibility of people simply disappearing; efforts to properly identify the staggering number of casualties and bodi More...

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Sep 03, 2009

Steven rated it:

This is a powerful book that deals with one aspect of the Civil War in a very different context than normal--death. Many books speak of the sanguinary nature of the Civil War, death due to battlefield trauma as well as death due to disease, accident, and so on. But this book, written by Drew Gilpin Faust, addresses death on a much broader basis. As a result, this is a powerful work.

One simple fact to begin: the number of Civil War soldiers who died is about equal to the number of Am More...

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May 22, 2009

Tony rated it:

a very interesting topic and for the most part well done. The author looks at how the civil war changed american consciousness about death, in pracitcal ways from how people grieved to economic ways, how it caused the budding practice of enbalming to take off, to administrative- how it caused the government to start to keep track and take care of it's soldiers, and not just officers, to the religious, whenre it made amass movement of the spiritual conception of death as just being a little blip More...

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Jan 04, 2011

Mike rated it:

Not as good as I had hoped. Faust's writing is concise and artful on a sentence-by-sentence basis; however, the flow is often clunky and sophomoric. The rapid, not-at-all seamless shift from evidence to analysis to evidence to analysis reminded me of helping fellow students edit papers, not reading a groundbreaking history.

As for the subject matter, I felt like it was a pretty standard, tried-and-true narrative of grief and mourning being projected onto the Civil War. I doubt much More...

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Dec 18, 2010

drea rated it:

I picked this up because I felt like my brain was getting light and fluffy and it's hard to get more serious than a book with "Suffering" in the title. It turned out to be a slow read, but an interesting one. Still, I think I would have appreciated it more had I started with a more comprehensive history of the Civil War and read this as a follow-up, as it's more of a psychological portrait of soldiers or those on the homefront who were desperate for news (and then, when that news was b More...

2 comments like

Nov 07, 2010

Mykl rated it:

This book looks at the culture of death and change that took place as a result of the civil war. Looked at the Good Death which meant dying in faith that one was to go to heaven and meet and await for others. Looked at the impact of thousands of death at once and the challenge of burying and remembering. Examined the resources available to the Union and such responsiblities taken on by the government vs the South whose efforts were led by civilians and largely Ladies leagues. Looked at how More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

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 equivalent to 6 million today. She also breaks new ground by reexamining the relationship of the war to modern institutions like the welfare state. Yet Faust constructs This Republic of Suffering in a

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Oct 08, 2009

Rodd rated it:

Reading "This Republic of Suffering" I was reminded of a quote by UCLA sociology professor Peter Kollock: "A group of people facing a social dilemma may completely understand the situation, may appreciate how each of their actions contributes to a disastrous outcome, and still be unable to do anything about it."

The most striking fact about the American Civil War is how poorly the future combatants understood how their actions would create an outcome incredibly mo More...

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Sep 16, 2009

Lilith rated it:

While I don't agree with some of Faust's conclusions or sweeping generalizations, this was a good introduction to the impact of the Civil War for me. I could have wished for more analysis of the changing attitudes toward the dead by artists and writers--the sections on Ambrose Bierce and Emily Dickinson, among others, were fascinating. There was also the blanket assertion that women were seen as apolitical in Civil War times; I would have loved a deeper discussion of how the appropriation of the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 11, 2011

Ed rated it:

by now I have read quite a few books about the Civil War. i'm not much interested in the stories of battles, but rather the moral quandaries of slavery and killing. Faust's book takes up death during the war from many angles. At times it read like a collection of note cards, but her continual return to the idea of a "good death," gives the book unity and in the end makes it a compelling meditation on the ways in which cultural views of death change. I'm not going to repeat her well d More...

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Aug 22, 2009

Camille rated it:

This book has started off a bit slow and I wondered if it was going to have enough information for the length of the book. I worried if it would get redundant. But it got much more interesting as time went on.

The books discusses several topics related to death and the war, including the role religion and the contemporary view on heaven factored into citizen's willingness to accept the high death toll. It also goes into the emergence of graves details, the difficulty of compiling a More...

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Apr 26, 2009

Kelly rated it:

Written with a studied calm, This Republic of Suffering carefully teases out bits of meaning in the rubble created by the American Civil War. Unlike many war chronicles, there is little here to gratify base interest in the macabre although it is a book whose central subject is the lineaments of corporeal mayhem.

In addition to Ms. Faust's laudable ability to write cogently and engagingly, she has also structured her book in an immensely gratifying manner. The first few chapters r More...

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Dec 12, 2008

Angela rated it:

3 1/2 stars. This book started off wonderfully -- it promised to be a well-written, engaging, and in-depth account of all the aspects of death in the Civil War. While the first few chapters really hit the mark, I felt Faust started to lose her steam afterward, as the chapters became slightly repetitive and loosely argued.

At times, it read more like a graduate thesis than a highly lauded work of nonfiction. Some of her more interesting points seemed more philosophically airy rather t More...

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Aug 21, 2009

Steve rated it:

In This Republic of Suffering historian and Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust explains how the mass casualties of the Civil War forced Americans to re-examine and radically alter their attitudes toward death.

Pre-Civil-War Americans sought "The Good Death" - to die at home, surrounded by family, prepared and at peace, fully confident of the life to come, and buried in a family plot or familiar local churchyard. The Good Death was obviously impossible for the hu More...

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