Summary Of This Republic Of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War Book Review
In the book This Republic of Suffering, the other intends to describe the many effects of death on the American population during the civil war, and argues that:
The Civil War confronted Americans with an enormous task, one quite different from saving or dividing the nation, ending or maintaining slavery, or winning the military conflict-the demands we customarily understand to have been made of the Civil War generation. Americans North and South would be compelled to confront-and resist-the war’s assault on their conceptions of how life should end, an assault that challenged their most fundamental assumptions about life’s value and meaning. As they faced horrors that forced them to question their ability to cope, their commitment to the war, even their faith in a righteous God, soldiers and civilians alike struggled to retain their most cherished beliefs, to make them work in the dramatically altered world that war had introduced. Americans had to identify-find, invent,
The author effectively explains the need for soldiers to die a good death despite missing most characteristics of a traditional death. She helps the reader empathize with the hard decisions that soldiers and military leaders had to make when killing other men that were so like themselves, who were sometimes neighbors or even related by blood. I did feel like the book was somewhat repetitious about certain aspects, but once it moved forward into explaining more facets of the country dealing with the expansive casualties involved with the war, I felt that it was very informative and in depth. I think that anyone that is interested in the early development of our current culture would like to learn about the effect death played in helping to modernize our