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 enlarge | Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $13.75
You Save: $14.20 (51%)
New (35) Used (24) Collectible (2) from $12.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 6555
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 037540404X
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.71
EAN: 9780375404047
ASIN: 037540404X
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Managing the Civil War dead made more dificult by the mystery September 18, 2008
The vastness of the civil war dead are unimaginable. Deaths were six times greater than WWII, or given that rate(2%) and today's population, we would be confronted with 6 Million fatalities. Could we - would we stand for such inepitude in the political generals? Amidst these gross statistics, Faust tells the narrative of the individual--"the importance of the individual life, the husband and father who was just as dead...as the thousands who had perished in the din of dramatic battle. He was a man who counted even if he was not counted." The mystery is that more than half of the dead were never named. This narrative of Civil War mortality reflects on the morality and its meaning-- "the place of the individual in a world of mass and increasingly mechanized slaughter. It was about what counted in a world transformed in four years...Where did God belong in such a world."
 An important reminder of American history August 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As we move towards the next election, this book serves as a timely reminder of how we became the nation that we are. By focusing on the dead, we are forced to consider how personal loss affected the mindset of so many families in the North and the South. These deaths remain alive for these families and their descendants and we would do well to remember their influence on contemporary politics. It is also appropriate to consider the religious zeal, so well described by the author, with which the majority of young men went into battle to meet death face to face. They were as convinced of eternal life in heaven as any suicide bomber today, and their relatives expected to meet them in heaven too. There is much to learn and much to ponder in this beautifully written book.
Intricate Work August 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a monumentally important work which will explain Americans' attitude towards our war dead. This is the short-term gain.
The long-term gain, the more provocative reading, is how the Civil War dead became a constituency in our Post-War Republic which tacitly spoke in favor of Manifest Destiny and the expanding American Empire.
Another reading would hint that American Individualism doesn't end with death.
All-in-all, a treasure trove of ideas about who we are and how we relate to death--specifically violent death in the name of "defending our country."
Death and the Civil War August 4, 2008
A beautifully written and conceived book. The author approaches the United States and civil war from the perspective of death; a perspective I have never seen addressed. Fascinating in her descriptions of a "good death" and in the stress, grieving and emotional toil knowing or not knowing, finding or not finding a deceased beloved, burying or not burying, had on the families and loved ones of soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War.
While the author does not make the conceptual or "time" leap to the present, the issues and themes are relevent for those who served, and their famiies, in Viet Nam, Iraq and other conflicts.
I was especially moved by the author's purposely emphasizing that one death has meaning, one death communuictes, one death can be devistating, even as she recounts the tens and tens of thousands who died, and what this mass killing and dying meant for the American psyche.
Anyone interested in the Civil War will learn from this book.
Almost a great book July 9, 2008
Academic. Readable. Redundant in places. Should have been longer in some ways, and shorter in others.
My primary disappointment was to finish the book with no perspective on how our American way of coping with death in the latter half of the 19th century fit with the European world. Was the concept of "a good death" peculiarly American? Did the Germans or English or French have systems for recovering battlefield corpses and notifying kin? Were the Eurpopean's horrified by the Civil War? Were our death rates for this war unusual compared to European wars? Why did Maine have a population larger than Connecticut in 1860? Was our civilian army unusual?
But it was an excellent book, and Ms. Gilpin should be commended for writing this social history on an under-examined topic. I think adding illustrations to it of folk-art responses to death would have been interesting - perhaps a companion volume?
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