"It is well that war is so terrible," Robert E. Lee reportedly
said, "or we would grow too fond of it." The essays collected here
make the case that we have grown too fond of it, and therefore we
must make the war ter-rible again. Taking a "freakonomics" approach
to Civil War studies, each contributor uses a seemingly unusual
story, incident, or phenomenon to cast new light on the nature of
the war itself. Collectively the essays remind us that war is
always about "damage," even at its most heroic and even when
certain people and things deserve to be damaged.
Here then is not only the grandness of the Civil War but its
more than occasional littleness. Here are those who profited by the
war and those who lost by it--and not just those who lost all save
their honor, but those who lost their honor too. Here are the
cowards, the coxcombs, the belles, the deserters, and the
scavengers who hung back and so survived, even thrived. Here are
dark topics like torture, hunger, and amputation. Here, in short,
is war.
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