The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War

The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War

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 and 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. "Smith's sensory history of the Civil War brings a dramatic new perspective to bear on this transformative event that gave rebirth to a nation .[A] foundational work, both in sensory history and in the emergent field of conflict and the senses. It yields many important insights into the lived experience of the Civil War, and is certain to inspire further research into what ranks as the most traumatic event in US history."--David Howes, Southern Spaces "[H]ighly readable prose....An able demonstration of sensory history..."--Alexandre F. Caillot, H-War "'The real war will never get in the books.' This may be the most famous sentence ever written about the Civil War... Even before its official start in 2011, the Civil War sesquicentennial has brought many attempts to prove [Walt] Whitman wrong...[P]erhaps most striking is the surge of books that belong to what might be called the school of gore--exemplified most recently by Mark M. Smith's The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War --books that almost seem to savor the range of ways in which living bodies were converted into corpses by fire or disease, in mud or in bed, quickly enough to block awareness of death's arrival, or slowly enough to taunt the dying with false promises of reprieve."-- The New York Review of Books "Even for jaded Civil War readers who think they have explored the war from every conceivable angle, this is fresh material compellingly explored...Mr. Smith is onto something original and important, and his relentless intensity, rigorous attention to detail and dazzling vocabulary make for a beguiling, if occasionally numbing, read."-- Wall Street Journal "Eminently readable... The Smell of Battle is an unconventional history of the Civil War, written with special attention to olfaction, touch, taste, sight, and hearing. It joins other recent histories of the war--Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War ; Michael C.C. Adams' Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War -- in trying to represent the war's massive levels of death and disruption so that 21st-century readers will really feel the history, deep in their bones...Sensory history, The Smell of Battle makes clear, is more than just an exercise in providing colorful detail...A book like Smith's, which tries to put reports of sights, sounds, and tastes in context, is a powerful argument for the importance of reading original historical sources while trying to understand the social mores of the time."-- Slate " The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege is an incredible book, one not only to read but also to be felt. Using diaries and letters, it provides us with a look at what it must have been like to be there--how it sounded, smelled, tasted and felt. Well-written and moving at times, it provides readers with an aspect of the war that has been neglected by historians."-- Bowling Green Daily News "[T]his book is a vital first step in making sense of the Civil War's sensate pa