This Republic of Suffering
  • Published: 1 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780375703836
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $37.99
Categories:

This Republic of Suffering

Death and the American Civil War (National Book Award Finalist)

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A bestselling, prize-winning, eye-opening study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and consequences of death in the face of the unprecedented slaughter of the Civil War—now with a new introduction by the author

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation.

An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes 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.

With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  • Published: 1 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780375703836
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $37.99
Categories:

Praise for This Republic of Suffering

Praise for This Republic of Suffering:

“A shattering history of the war, focusing exclusively on death and dying--how Americans prepared for death, imagined it, risked it, endured it and worked to understand it.” —L.A. Times Book Review

“Faust... yanks aside the usual veil of history to look narrowly at life's intimate level for new perspectives from the past. She focuses on ordinary lives under extreme duress, which makes for compelling reading.” —USA Today

“The beauty and originality of Faust's book is that it shows how thoroughly the work of mourning became the business of capitalism, merchandised throughout a society.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

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