Written by one of my favorite Hendrix professors, in some ways, this book is a portion of one of my favorite classes at Hendrix: History of Death in America.
Schantz's thesis is startingly simple but at the same time remarkably fresh and new: The mourning/death culture of the 19th century helped prepare Americans to accept and embrace the mass casualities of the Civil War. Schantz outlines some of the key movements in the mourning culture--rural cemeteries, literature, art, and death in abolitionist literature. Throughout the read, I had flashbacks to the class, but there was still plenty of fresh food for thought.
This book in no way replaces the magic of a Schantz lecture or class, but it should be required reading for anyone interested in the social context of the antebellum and Civil War years.