The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege
A Sensory History of the Civil War
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 13 November 2014
- ISBN 9780199759989
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages210 pages
- Size 211x147x22 mm
- Weight 340 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 16 illus. 0
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Short description:
The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege considers how all five senses--sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch--shaped the course, meaning, and content of the Civil War, and explores the impact of the war's sensory experience on multiple constituencies, including Confederate and Union soldiers and sailors, southern and northern civilians, women, and slaves.
MoreLong description:
Historical accounts of major events have almost always relied upon what those who were there witnessed. Nowhere is this truer than in the nerve-shattering chaos of warfare, where sight seems to confer objective truth and acts as the basis of reconstruction. In The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege, historian Mark M. Smith considers how all five senses, including sight, shaped the experience of the Civil War and thus its memory, exploring its full sensory impact on everyone from the soldiers on the field to the civilians waiting at home.
From the eardrum-shattering barrage of shells announcing the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter; to the stench produced by the corpses lying in the mid-summer sun at Gettysburg; to the siege of Vicksburg, once a center of Southern culinary aesthetics and starved into submission, Smith recreates how Civil War was felt and lived. Relying on first-hand accounts, Smith focuses on specific senses, one for each event, offering a wholly new perspective. At Bull Run, the similarities between the colors of the Union and Confederate uniforms created concern over what later would be called "friendly fire" and helped decide the outcome of the first major battle, simply because no one was quite sure they could believe their eyes. He evokes what it might have felt like to be in the HL Hunley submarine, in which eight men worked cheek by jowl in near-total darkness in a space 48 inches high, 42 inches wide. Often argued to be the first "total war," the Civil War overwhelmed the senses because of its unprecedented nature and scope, rendering sight less reliable and, Smith shows, forcefully engaging the nonvisual senses. Sherman's March was little less than a full-blown assault on Southern sense and sensibility, leaving nothing untouched an no one unaffected.
Unique, compelling, and fascinating, The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege, offers readers way to experience the Civil War with fresh eyes.
Smiths choice of episodes is inspiring. Perhaps not evident from the last two chapters titles, themes are introduced with playful language, his enjoyment in writing this volume evident throughout ... I would be surprised if this book does not change historical accounts of warfare. The twentieth century brought total war to greater numbers of civilians of many other nations, but historians have yet to write the sort of total history, which adequately conveys the full meaning of such collective trauma. Yet again, Smith has provided us with a model.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. The Sounds of Secession
2. Eying First Bull Run
3. Cornelia Hancock's Sense of Smell
4. Hollowing Out Vicksburg
5. The Hunley's Impact
Epilogue: Experiencing Total War
