Welcome to Litsy!

Informative and interesting!

"Death without dignity, without decency, without identity imperiled the meaning of the life that preceded it. Americans had not just lost the dead; they had lost their own lives as they had understood them before the war."

By focusing on the shared experience of death and loss Gilpin Faust frames the Civil War as a national experience rather than one of just North vs South. The author shows how the unprecedented carnage of modern warfare necessitated a shift in American understanding of death and dying that has pervaded the culture since. I can't help but read this account of crisis shaping culture in light of the current pandemic, esp the numbing effect of numbers.

🍁 Catching up on my correspondence, and the hibiscus I pruned are coming back beautifully.

🍁 How crisis shapes culture, or how shared experience doesn't necessarily unite people who are committed to remaining divided.

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

"Mortality defines the human condition." (from the Preface)

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Cried my way through the first chapter of this one this morning. My daughter finished the book yesterday. I asked her if it gets any less sad. After a pause she said, "Not really."

I need to make sure I have recovery media for once I finish the rest of the book.

"Soldier," a Confederate chaplain reminded his troops in 1863, "your business is to die."

That is quite a pep talk. Perhaps a little too honest.

I was engrossed by this study of death, grief, and the bureaucracy of the dead during and after the Civil War. Particularly resonant were the discussions of how the idea of the Confederacy —with all its white supremacist values— just refuses to die (in the immediate aftermath, during reconstruction, and even now). A remarkably timely work of scholarship.

In honor of Memorial Day, remembering those who gave their lives #inmemorium #maybookflowers