Preview – Loperfido (Ed.), “Death, Disease, and Life at War”

I previewed Christopher Loperfido’s A Surgeon’s Tale here back in 2011. So I’ll let that serve as part of this preview of a new Savas Beatie edition of the book, retitled (with a much appreciated Oxford comma) Death Disease, and Life at War: The Civil War Letters of Surgeon James D. Benton, 111th and 98th New York Infantry Regiments, 1862-1865. There have been changes made to this edition, and Christopher laid them out for me. I thought about rewriting this myself, but hey, seems clear enough:

• The military organization has been cleaned up a bit to give readers a better understanding of military lingo that James might reference if they were not already aware.
• The introduction includes all new photos and is more detailed regarding the status of the union army medical department at the beginning of the war, what an assistant surgeon would have done during the war, more background information about James and his family, and sets the stage at Harper’s Ferry for the beginning of James’s letters after the 111th was captured and paroled.
• Footnotes have been tweaked, more information and some have been added and others subtracted.
• A postscript section has been added about a bible James picked up during the war and returned in 1885.
• 5 appendices were added to give an introduction to Jonathan Letterman, Sanitary Commission, Ambulance Corps, Amputations, and Civil War dressings.
• More context about what was going on during the war in each year has been added and cleaned up as well.