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This Republic of Suffering
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War | Drew Gilpin Faust
9 posts | 14 read | 23 to read
More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation, describing how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality.
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review
branson18anderson
Pickpick

Informative and interesting!

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ImperfectCJ
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"Death without dignity, without decency, without identity imperiled the meaning of the life that preceded it. Americans had not just lost the dead; they had lost their own lives as they had understood them before the war."

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ImperfectCJ
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Pickpick

By focusing on the shared experience of death and loss Gilpin Faust frames the Civil War as a national experience rather than one of just North vs South. The author shows how the unprecedented carnage of modern warfare necessitated a shift in American understanding of death and dying that has pervaded the culture since. I can't help but read this account of crisis shaping culture in light of the current pandemic, esp the numbing effect of numbers.

51 likes2 stack adds
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ImperfectCJ
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🍁 Catching up on my correspondence, and the hibiscus I pruned are coming back beautifully.

🍁 How crisis shapes culture, or how shared experience doesn't necessarily unite people who are committed to remaining divided.

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

Eggs Great job-thanks for joining in 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 4y
38 likes1 comment
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ImperfectCJ
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"Mortality defines the human condition." (from the Preface)

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

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ImperfectCJ
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Cried my way through the first chapter of this one this morning. My daughter finished the book yesterday. I asked her if it gets any less sad. After a pause she said, "Not really."

I need to make sure I have recovery media for once I finish the rest of the book.

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ImperfectCJ
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"Soldier," a Confederate chaplain reminded his troops in 1863, "your business is to die."

That is quite a pep talk. Perhaps a little too honest.

review
BookishMarginalia
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Pickpick

I was engrossed by this study of death, grief, and the bureaucracy of the dead during and after the Civil War. Particularly resonant were the discussions of how the idea of the Confederacy —with all its white supremacist values— just refuses to die (in the immediate aftermath, during reconstruction, and even now). A remarkably timely work of scholarship.

nightwitch Well, I'm sold. 7y
nightwitch Well, I'm sold. 7y
myers85 Good review. I'm very intrigued by this book now. 7y
emilyesears I actually started this several years in print and ended up taking it back to the library half finished. I should try again on audio. 7y
153 likes16 stack adds4 comments
review
CAGirlReading
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Pickpick

In honor of Memorial Day, remembering those who gave their lives #inmemorium #maybookflowers

Texreader Thank you. 7y
96 likes1 comment