This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

by Drew Galpin Faust Narrated by Lorna Raver

Overview

During the Civil War, 620,000 soldiers lost their lives-equivalent to six million in today's population. This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of the enormous death toll from material, political, intellectual, and spiritual angles.

Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives, but the life of the nation, and describes how a deeply religious culture reconciled the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the viewpoints of soldiers, families, statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, and nurses, Northerners and Southerners, slaveholders and freed people, the most exalted, and the most humble are brought together to give a vivid understanding of the Civil War's widely shared reality.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Anyone wanting to understand the ‘real war’ and its transcendent meaning must face the facts Faust arrays before us.”

New York Times Book Review

Extraordinary…overlooks nothing.’”

Christian Science Monitor

A harrowing but fascinating read.”

New Yorker

Shows how thoroughly the work of mourning became the business of capitalism, merchandised throughout a society.”

Newsweek

This Republic of Suffering is one of those groundbreaking histories in which a crucial piece of the past, previously overlooked or misunderstood, suddenly clicks into focus.”

USA Today

Yanks aside the usual veil of history…[and] focuses on ordinary lives under extreme duress, which makes for compelling reading.”

AudioFile

Lorna Raver’s…reserved manner fits the somber topic…Raver’s best moments come as she reads the letters of worried relatives seeking knowledge of the status and whereabouts of soldiers they fear may be dead.”

New York Observer

Eloquent and imaginative…[A] widely and justly praised scholarly history.”

American History

If you read only one book on the Civil War this year, make it this one.”

Kirkus Reviews

A moving work of social history, detailing how the Civil War changed perceptions and behaviors about death…An illuminating study.”

Publishers Weekly

An insightful, often moving portrait of a people torn by grief.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169809107
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/15/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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