Description
Book SynopsisNew Men uncovers the narrative of veteran reentry into civilian life and exposes a growing gap between how former soldiers of the Civil War saw themselves and the representations of them created by late nineteenth-century American society. This gap generated a new conception of the “veteran” still influential today.
Trade Review"Terms like innovative and interdisciplinary are often used for works that are neither, but Casey's New Men is an exception. He nicely draws on the methods and secondary sources of both history and literature to create a unique study that explores ideas neither field could fully examine by itself." -- -Andrew L. Slap East Tennessee State University "New Men deftly blends historical and literary analysis to chart the emergence of Civil War veterans as a privileged class of citizens during the decades after Appomattox. Casey's insights into the militarization of late-nineteenth-century America, and the alternatives and limits to that process, offer a valuable framework for understanding the succession of postwar cultures that has since characterized the United States." -- -Thomas J. Brown University of South Carolina "Through close readings of novels, short stories, and memoirs by and about Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, white and black, John Casey's New Men offers a host of fresh perspectives on the transformative impact of war-time experiences on those who survived it. These literary lenses have much to tell us about how veterans saw themselves, each other, and the war itself, making this a major contribution to the ever-growing scholarship on the war's legacy and how it was shaped." -- -John C, Inscoe University of Georgia "New Men is a unique hybrid that takes an interdisciplinary approach to identifying the meaning of the very notion of 'veteran' in American society." -- -Barbara Gannon University of Central Florida "John A. Casey explores the complicated aftermaths of the Civil War for the 'new' men it created by grounding often rarely used literary sources in the lived history of the Gilded Age. This nuanced and often moving account of the ways white and black veterans struggled to protect their legacies and their interests against the perceptions of the rising generation captures the tension sparked by each clashing efforts to build a useful narrative of the war and of the men who fought it." -- -James Marten Marquette University
Table of ContentsTABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: Demobilization, Disability, and the Competing Imagery of the Wounded Warrior and the Citizen-Soldier CHAPTER TWO: Veterans, Artisanal Manhood, and the Quest for Postwar Employment CHAPTER THREE: Narrating Traumatic Experience in Civil War Memoir CHAPTER FOUR: The Glorious Burden of the Aging Civil War Veteran CHAPTER FIVE: Racial Uplift and the Figure of the Black Soldier EPILOGUE BIBLIOGRAPHY
