April 6th and 7th is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh that was fought in 1862. In this 1965 snapshot my older brother Neil and I are standing in front of Ruggles Battery near the Hornet's Nest. Our parents took us boys on a road trip to Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga and Atlanta. Little did I know then I would end up living in Atlanta,
This trip was the beginning of my lifelong interest in history. Last year, I wrote an essay for the Tropics of Meta about Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, which established that the two-day battle with almost 25,000 casualties was unlike anything seen before on the North American continent. The premise of the book is that the Civil War changed America's attitudes towards death. The essay draws a comparison between Faust's book and the struggles this country has coming to terms with the nearly one million deaths from COVID-19.
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