
Pathway to Hell
A Tragedy of the American Civil War
Dennis W. Brandt(Author)
Bison Books (Publisher)
Published on 1. July 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-8032-2824-5 (ISBN)
Description
Shell shock, battle fatigue, posttraumatic stress disorder, lack of moral courage: different terms for the same mental condition, formal names that change with observed circumstances and whenever experts feel prompted to coin a more suitable descriptive term for the shredding of the human spirit. Although the specter of psychological dysfunction has marched alongside all soldiers in all wars, always at the ready to ravish minds, rarely is it discussed when the topic is America's greatest conflict, the Civil War. Yet mind-destroying terror was as present at Gettysburg and Antietam as in Vietnam and today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Drawing almost exclusively from extensive primary accounts, Dennis W. Brandt presents a detailed case study of mental stress that is exceptional in the vast literature of the American Civil War. Pathway to Hell offers sobering insight into the horrors that war wreaked upon one young man and illuminates the psychological aspect of the War Between the States.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Nebraska
United States
Publishing group
University of Nebraska Press
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
24 illustrations, 4 maps
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
290 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8032-2824-5 (9780803228245)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dennis W. Brandt is a freelance author-historian and the author of From Home Guards to Heroes: The 87th Pennsylvania and Its Civil War Community and Shattering the Truth: The Slandering of Abraham Lincoln. Richard Wheeler is the author of over sixteen books of military history, including Voices of 1776: The Story of the American Revolution in the Words of Those Who Were There. Thomas P. Lowry is a retired psychiatrist and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and continues his work as an independent historical scholar. He is the author of Venereal Disease and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Nebraska 2005).
Content
Foreword by Richard WheelerPrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsPrologue: And So It Concludes1. Influences2. Growing Up3. Pennsylvania Calls4. When It Was Still Called Glory5. Fight!6. Down in the Valley7. Closer to Darkness8. Bloodiest Day9. Hell Itself10. Top of the Slide11. Depths12. Home, Where the War Never Ends13. Analyzing the Dead14. Was Angelo Unique?EpilogueA Psychiatric Meditation: Thoughts on Angelo Crapsey by Thomas P. Lowry, MDSelected BibliographyIndex