THE WOUNDED RIVER: THE CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF JOHN VANCE LAUDERDALE, M.D.

Lauderdale, John Vance, M.D., edited by Peter Josyph

ISBN 10: 0870133284 / ISBN 13: 9780870133282

Published by Michigan St. Univ. Press, East Lansing, 1993

About this Item

241 pp., illus., map.

Seller Inventory # 021526

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE WOUNDED RIVER: THE CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF JOHN VANCE LAUDERDALE, M.D.
• Publisher: Michigan St. Univ. Press, East Lansing
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870133284
• ISBN 13: 9780870133282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Second Printing
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • WAR OF THE REBELLION

About this title

Synopsis

The Wounded River takes the reader back more than 130 years to reveal a marvelous, first-hand account of nineteenth-century warfare. In the process, the work cuts the legends and mythology that have come to frame and define accounts of America's bloodiest war. Of equal significance, Peter Josyph's editorial work on this superb collection of letters from the Western Americana Division of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library enhances and clarifies Lauderdale's experinces as a surgeon aboard the U.S. Army hospital ship D. A. January.  
      The reader looks on while Lauderdale, a New York civilian contract surgeon, operates on hundreds of Confederate and Union wounded. The young doctor's clear writing style and his great compassion for these unfortunate men whose bodies were ripped apart by bullets, shell fragments, and bayonets permits us to catch a disturbiing glimpse of what modern warfare does to humanity. Finally, we learn of Lauderdale's motives for volunteering, his impressions of the "hospital ship" D. A. January, Confederate morale, the Abolitionist cause, and black slavery. The Wounded River is a must read for anyone interested in the real American Civil War.

About the Author

Peter Josyph is a bestselling author, editor, painter, and photographer. His work has appeared in Southern Quarterly, The Bloomsbury Review, Library Journal, Twentieth Century Literature, Studies in Short Fiction, and The Cormac McCarthy Journal. He edited The Wounded River: The Civil War Letters of John Vance Lauderdale, M.D., which was selected as one of the New York Times Book Review's Notable Books of 1993.