"This impressive study, based on a random sample of forty thousand
Civil War soldiers both black and white, reaches important
conclusions about their motivation and behavior. Its most
significant findings emphasize the role of close social networks
within companies and regiments in promoting combat performance,
preventing desertion, and increasing survival rates in POW camps.
Readable and accessible to nonspecialists, this book should find a
wide audience among those interested in the Civil War as well as
group behavior more generally."--James McPherson, author of the
Pulitzer Prize-winning "Battle Cry of Freedom"
"This remarkable book is destined to become a classic in social
science. It addresses issues of supreme importance and
timeliness--loyalty, betrayal, heroism, cowardice, survival, the
challenges of diversity, and the benefits of social bonds. It rests
on rigorous statistical analysis of an extraordinary historical
archive, and yet it is so readable as to be unputdownable. It deals
with a single epochal event in one nation's history--the U.S. Civil
War--and yet its lessons are highly relevant in many other eras and
societies, including our own."--Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community"
"Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn built a social science laboratory
from the enlistment and pension records of men who fought in the
Union Army during the American Civil War. In that remarkable
laboratory they have discovered how friendship, community ties, and
social status alter our choices. Read "Heroes and Cowards" for its
reliable science; savor it for how it honors the harrowing
circumstances that made the science possible."--Michael Hout,
coauthor of "Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last
One Hundred Years"
"Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn have written a superb book on
bravery in the Civil War. Their work informs us not only about
courage under fire, but about the many settings where people are
called upon to act for a common good. This is a pioneering piece of
social science."--Edward L. Glaeser, Harvard University
"In the remarkable "Heroes and Cowards," Costa and Kahn
demonstrate how social bonds helped determine which soldiers would
fight to the death and which would flee for their lives, which
soldiers would survive the deadly prison camps and which would
succumb. The authors utilize the tools of social science to serve,
rather than obscure, the riveting accounts by Union soldiers--the
heroes, the cowards, and those in between."--Claude S. Fischer,
University of California, Berkeley
"With its excellent blending of qualitative and quantitative
data, this is a significant contribution to Civil War history and,
more generally, to military history. It will be of great interest
to economists, historians and general readers, especially the large
number still fascinated by the Civil War."--Stanley L. Engerman,
coauthor of "Time on the Cross"
"Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn are two accomplished scholars whose
work offers substantially new insights, on why men desert and how
this affects them; on the experience of black soldiers during and
after the war; and on the migration patterns of war veterans. The
research behind this book is based on data that has not previously
been used by scholars, and their use of that data is imaginative
and revealing. "Heroes and Cowards" is a significant contribution
to ourknowledge of how Civil War veterans coped with the stresses
of war and their lives after 1865."--Roger Ransom, author of "The
Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been"
""Heroes and Cowards" is a remarkable and impressive piece of
economic history, a unique book that will interest a large
readership."--Louis P. Cain, Loyola University Chicago
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