“An exhaustive compilation of first-hand accounts of the Gettysburg battlefield in the days, weeks, and months following the fight . . . heartbreaking.” —Austin Civil War Round Table Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was the largest battle fought on the American continent. Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and tons of detritus scattered in every direction? How did the civilians cope with their radically changed lives? Gregory Coco’s A Strange and Blighted Land offers a comprehensive account of these and other issues. Arranged in a series of topical chapters, A Strange and Blighted Land begins with a tour of the battlefield, mostly through eyewitness accounts, of the death and destruction littering the sprawling landscape. Once the size and scope are exposed to readers, Coco moves on to discuss the dead of Gettysburg, North and South, how their remains were handled, and how and why the Gettysburg National Cemetery was established. The author also discusses at length how the wounded and prisoners were handled and the fate of the thousands of stragglers and deserters left behind once the armies left before concluding with the preservation efforts that culminated in the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895. Coco’s prose is gripping, personal, and brutally honest. There is no mistaking where he comes down on the issue: There was nothing pretty or glorious or romantic about a battle—especially once the fighting ended.

While the Battle of Gettysburg is often remembered for Chamberlain's dramatic defense of Little Round Top, Pickett and Pettigrew's tragic charge, and the stand of the "Iron Brigade," less-remembered units like the 151st Pennsylvania were also crucial in the Civil War's most famous battle. The 151st lost over 72 percent of its men to death, wounds, or capture, the second-highest-percentage loss of all Federal units at the battle. This is the account of that courageous unit and its role in this decisive moment in American history.

A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction “Imagining the End suggests, in a sober yet hopeful spirit, how mourning, rightly understood, can give meaning to our lives in the disenchanted times in which we find ourselves. In exploring the hopes that have failed us, the projects that have run into the sand, the loves we have lost, the attachments that have come to an end—a work of what amounts to creative mourning—we can develop a stance in the here and how from which the psyche can look outward and flourish. As he did earlier in his explorations of what it can mean to hope, Jonathan Lear here expands and deepens our understanding of what it can mean to mourn.” —J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate A leading philosopher explores the ethics and psychology of flourishing during times of personal and collective crisis. Imagine the end of the world. Now think about the end—the purpose—of life. They’re different exercises, but in Jonathan Lear’s profound reflection on mourning and meaning, these two kinds of thinking are also connected: related ways of exploring some of our deepest questions about individual and collective values and the enigmatic nature of the good. Lear is one of the most distinctive intellectual voices in America, a philosopher and psychoanalyst who draws from ancient and modern thought, personal history, and everyday experience to help us think about how we can flourish, or fail to, in a world of flux and finitude that we only weakly control. His range is on full display in Imagining the End as he explores seemingly disparate concerns to challenge how we respond to loss, crisis, and hope. He considers our bewilderment in the face of planetary catastrophe. He examines the role of the humanities in expanding our imaginative and emotional repertoire. He asks how we might live with the realization that cultures, to which we traditionally turn for solace, are themselves vulnerable. He explores how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life. Along the way, he touches on figures as diverse as Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, and the British royals Harry and Meghan. Written with Lear’s characteristic elegance, philosophical depth, and psychological perceptiveness, Imagining the End is a powerful meditation on persistence in an age of turbulence and anxiety.

Fewer Americans were captured or missing during the Vietnam War than in any previous major military conflict in U.S. history. Yet despite their small numbers, American POWs inspired an outpouring of concern that slowly eroded support for the war. Michael J. Allen reveals how wartime loss transformed U.S. politics well before, and long after, the war's official end. Throughout the war's last years and in the decades since, Allen argues, the effort to recover lost warriors was as much a means to establish responsibility for their loss as it was a search for answers about their fate. Though millions of Americans and Vietnamese took part in that effort, POW and MIA families and activists dominated it. Insisting that the war was not over "until the last man comes home," this small, determined group turned the unprecedented accounting effort against those they blamed for their suffering. Allen demonstrates that POW/MIA activism prolonged the hostility between the United States and Vietnam even as the search for the missing became the basis for closer ties between the two countries in the 1990s. Equally important, he explains, POW/MIA families' disdain for the antiwar left and contempt for federal authority fueled the conservative ascendancy after 1968. Mixing political, cultural, and diplomatic history, Until the Last Man Comes Home presents the full and lasting impact of the Vietnam War in ways that are both familiar and surprising.

He was found dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg, an unknown soldier with nothing to identify him but an ambrotype of his three children, clutched in his fingers. With the photograph as the single, sad clue to his identity, a publicity campaign to locate his family swept the North. Within a month, the bereaved widow and children were located in Portville, New York, and the devoted father was revealed to be Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Volunteers. Using many previously untapped sources, this book tells the tale of 19th-century war, sentiment, and popular culture in greater detail than ever before. The Humiston story touched deep emotions in Civil War America, and inspired a flood of heartfelt prose, poetry, and song. Amid a vast outpouring of public sympathy, a charitable drive evolved to assist the bereft family. At the end of the war, the crusade was expanded to establish a home at Gettysburg for orphans of deceased soldiers. The first residents of the institution were Amos Humiston's widow Philinda and her three children: Franklin, Alice, and Frederick. In this extensive account, a full portrait emerges of Amos Humiston, the loving husband and father destined to be remembered for his death tableau, and his family, the widow and orphans who struggled for the rest of their lives with celebrity born of tragedy.

William C. Oates is best remembered as the Confederate officer defeated at Gettysburg's Little Round Top, losing a golden opportunity to turn the Union's flank and win the battle--and perhaps the war. Now, Glenn W. LaFantasie--bestselling author of Twilight at Little Round Top--has written a gripping biography of Oates. Oates was no moonlight-and-magnolias Southerner, as LaFantasie shows. Raised in the hard-scrabble Wiregrass Country of Alabama, he ran away from home as a teenager, roamed through Louisiana and Texas--where he took up card sharking--and finally returned to Alabama, to pull himself up by his bootstraps and become a respected attorney. During the war, he rose to the rank of colonel, served under Stonewall Jackson and Lee, was wounded six times and lost an arm. Returning home, he launched a successful political career, becoming a seven-term congressman and ultimately governor. LaFantasie shows how, for Oates, the war never really ended--he remained devoted to the Lost Cause, and spent the rest of his life waging the political battles of Reconstruction. Here then is a richly evocative story of Southern life before, during, and after the Civil War, based on first-time and exclusive access of family papers and never-before-seen archives.

Compares the faith and politics of former Confederate chaplains during the Reconstruction period, and argues for some counterintuitive understandings of their beliefs and practices in the post-war period