Weirding the War

Stories from the Civil War's Ragged Edges

Amy Taylor, Stephen Berry

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780820341279, 9780820334134
• eBook ISBN: 9780820341859
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

"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 ter­rible 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1. DEATH BECOMES US: THE CIVIL WAR AND THE APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION
• PART 2. HELL’S BELLES: NEW LOOKS AT CIVIL WAR WOMEN
• PART 3. INSIDE THE CIVIL WAR BODY
• PART 4. THE TORTUOUS ROAD TO FREEDOM
• PART 5. HONOR IS THE GIFT A MAN GIVES HIMSELF — AND MEN CAN BE VERY, VERY GENEROUS
• PART 6. PICKING UP THE PIECES
• The Weirdlings
• Acknowledgments
• Index