9/21/10

This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust


Read: September 16 - September 21
Format: AUDIO VERSION EQUIVALENT 645 pages
Source: Public library
Subject: Civil War, Death
Category: Civil War and its Leaders
Genre: History
Challenges: 101020, 75 Book, SYLL, TIOLI, Audio, Chunkster
Stars: 1½


This book is about the carnage that was the result of the Civil War.
The reader is told of the total of casualties - dead, missing in action, and injured. We are also told of the indignity of the bodies that are left on the battlefields, unburied. We hear this through diary excerpts, journals and first hand accounts from Union as well as Confederate soldiers.

It is sad to think that this time of literal carnage on the battlefields that there were no contingencies for aiding the injured so that many were just left on the field where they fell.
This book also relates the improvements that were made to embalming processes and to the federal cemetery system so that families were able to accept the bodies of their loved ones or visit their final resting places.

I didn't like this book because it just seemed to have no direction and to continually run on from one topic of death to another with no purpose. It didn't seem to have any continuity or justification for what it was stating, it just stated it. Information - yes, purpose - No.

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