A veteran of the 52nd Virginia Regiment recounts his experiences under the great Stonewall Jackson in his Valley campaign and up until he lost his leg for the Southern cause at the battle of Cedar Creek.

From the wooden teeth of George Washington to the Bly prosthesis, popular in the 1860s and boasting easy uniform motions of the limb, to today's lifelike approximations, prosthetic devices reveal the extent to which the evolution and design of technologies of the body are intertwined with both the practical and subjective needs of human beings. The peculiar history of prosthetic devices sheds light on the relationship between technological change and the civilizing process of modernity, and analyzes the concrete materials of prosthetics which carry with them ideologies of body, ideals, body politics, and culture. Simultaneously critiquing, historicizing, and theorizing prosthetics, Artificial Parts, Practical Lives lays out a balanced and complex picture of its subject, neither vilifying nor celebrating the merger of flesh and machine.

A comprehensive encyclopedia that describes the experiences of American veterans from the Revolutionary War to the present. From the American Revolution to today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Encyclopedia of the Veteran in America captures the experiences and lives of our nation's veterans in a comprehensive, unprecedented way. It is the first major reference work focused exclusively on an American soldier's view of military life during war and the often difficult return to civilian life and peacetime afterward. Encyclopedia of the Veteran in America comprises over 100 insightful entries that include major examinations of the American Revolution, Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Gulf, Afghan, and Iraq Wars, plus brief reviews of other conflicts. In addition, it highlights the specific experiences of POW, MIAs, and their families, as well as African Americans, women, and American Indian soldiers. Additional entries focus on key historic figures like Theodore Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur, veterans' organizations like the American Legion and the VFW, legislative initiatives, and the full range of memorials and monuments dedicated to our fighting men and women.

Rebels at the Gate is the dramatic story of the first Union victories of the Civil War and the events that caused Virginians to divide their state. In a defiant act to sustain President Lincoln's war effort, Virginia Unionists created their own state government in 1861—destined to become the new state of West Virginia.

No single group of men at West Point--or possibly any academy--has been so indelibly written into history as the class of 1846. The names are legendary: Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, George B. McClellan, Ambrose Powell Hill, Darius Nash Couch, George Edward Pickett, Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox, and George Stoneman. The class fought in three wars, produced twenty generals, and left the nation a lasting legacy of bravery, brilliance, and bloodshed. This fascinating, remarkably intimate chronicle traces the lives of these unforgettable men--their training, their personalities, and the events in which they made their names and met their fates. Drawing on letters, diaries, and personal accounts, John C. Waugh has written a collective biography of masterful proportions, as vivid and engrossing as fiction in its re-creation of these brilliant figures and their pivotal roles in American history.

After the Civil War, white Confederate and Union army veterans reentered--or struggled to reenter--the lives and communities they had left behind. In Sing Not War, James Marten explores how the nineteenth century's "Greatest Generation" attempted to blend back into society and how their experiences were treated by nonveterans. Many soldiers, Marten reveals, had a much harder time reintegrating into their communities and returning to their civilian lives than has been previously understood. Although Civil War veterans were generally well taken care of during the Gilded Age, Marten argues that veterans lost control of their legacies, becoming best remembered as others wanted to remember them--for their service in the war and their postwar political activities. Marten finds that while southern veterans were venerated for their service to the Confederacy, Union veterans often encountered resentment and even outright hostility as they aged and made greater demands on the public purse. Drawing on letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources, Sing Not War illustrates that during the Gilded Age "veteran" conjured up several conflicting images and invoked contradicting reactions. Deeply researched and vividly narrated, Marten's book counters the romanticized vision of the lives of Civil War veterans, bringing forth new information about how white veterans were treated and how they lived out their lives.

Long after the Civil War ended, one conflict raged on: the battle to define and shape the war's legacy. Across the Bloody Chasm deftly examines Civil War veterans' commemorative efforts and the concomitant -- and sometimes conflicting -- movement for reconciliation. Though former soldiers from both sides of the war celebrated the history and values of the newly reunited America, a deep divide remained between people in the North and South as to how the country's past should be remembered and the nation's ideals honored. Union soldiers could not forget that their southern counterparts had taken up arms against them, while Confederates maintained that the principles of states' rights and freedom from tyranny aligned with the beliefs and intentions of the founding fathers. Confederate soldiers also challenged northern claims of a moral victory, insisting that slavery had not been the cause of the war, and ferociously resisting the imposition of postwar racial policies. M. Keith Har-ris argues that although veterans remained committed to reconciliation, the sectional sensibilities that influenced the memory of the war left the North and South far from a meaningful accord. Harris's masterful analysis of veteran memory assesses the ideological commitments of a generation of former soldiers, weaving their stories into the larger narrative of the process of national reunification. Through regimental histories, speeches at veterans' gatherings, monument dedications, and war narratives, Harris uncovers how veterans from both sides kept the deadliest war in American history alive in memory at a time when the nation seemed determined to move beyond conflict.

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"Brian Craig Miller provides medical history of the procedure, looks at men who rejected amputation, and examines how Southern men and women adjusted their ideas about honor, masculinity, and love in response to the presence of large numbers of amputees during and after the war. While some historians have explored the lives of the wounded, disabled and amputated soldiers throughout the major military conflicts of the twentieth century, few monographs have returned to a time when medical care remained primitive at best in American history: the Civil War... In his travels in the South over the past five years, Miller has combed through archives, producing a wealth of surgical and medical manuals, hospital records, surgeons reports, diary, letter and journal entries pertaining to amputation, legislative records, pension files and applications, newspaper reports and numerous anecdotes about what it means to lose a limb."--Provided by publisher.