Home › Books › A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle…
A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
by
85/99
Critics' Rating Index
66/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
34/99
Volume of Reviews
42/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Matteson illuminates three harrowing months of the Civil War and their enduring legacy for America. December 1862 drove the United States toward a breaking point. The Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and Northern confidence. As Abraham Lincoln's government threatened to fracture, this critical moment also tested five extraordinary individuals whose lives reflect the soul of a nation. The changes they underwent led to profound repercussions in the country's law, literature, politics, and popular mythology. Taken together, their stories offer a striking restatement of what it means to be American. Guided by patriotism, driven by desire, all five moved toward singular destinies. A young Harvard intellectual steeped in courageous ideals, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. confronted grave challenges to his concept of duty. The one-eyed army chaplain Arthur Fuller pitted his frail body against the evils of slavery. Walt Whitman, a gay Brooklyn poet condemned by the guardians of propriety, and Louisa May Alcott, a struggling writer seeking an authentic voice and her father's admiration, tended soldiers' wracked bodies as nurses. On the other side of the national schism, John Pelham, a West Point cadet from Alabama, achieved a unique excellence in artillery tactics as he served a doomed and misbegotten cause. A Worse Place Than Hell brings together the prodigious forces of war with the intimacy of individual lives. Matteson interweaves the historic and the personal in a work as beautiful as it is powerful. 16 pages of illustrations, 2 maps
Reviews
"With keen biographical skill, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matteson deftly interweaves the wartime actions of these five with what occurred in their lives and minds before, during, and, for all but one, after the battle ..."
"Matteson immerses readers ..."
"In an impressive narrative juggling act, Matteson deftly unfurls many stories within stories with a confident, novelistic flair ..."
"Matteson the opportunity to range widely over varied perspectives, and his firm grasp of detail, visible as well in his fine biographies of the Alcott family and Margaret Fuller, makes each of his characters vivid and distinctive ..."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!