Military Book Buzz

Buy This Republic of Suffering

Published: January 8, 2008 (Knopf)
Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Book Description- An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War.  During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives.  An equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million.  This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual.  The eminent historian Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation and its understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.  The author describes how survivors mourned and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God, pondered who should die and under what circumstances, and reconceived its understanding of life after death.  Faust details the logistical challenges involved when thousands were left dead, many with their identities unknown, on the fields of places like Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg.