Why read The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege?

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

Book description

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,…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Edward T. Linenthal

Author

Historian Mark M. Smith is one of the pioneers of the truly exciting field of sensory history. Smith’s book is a model for how the next generations of historians can expand our understanding of the power and spectacle of war through a focus on all the senses. Smith’s chapters pick a particular sense at a particular Civil War site—my favorite is “Cornelia Hancock’s Sense of Smell,” which helps us appreciate how the assaults of transgressive smells lasted far beyond the three days of combat at Gettysburg. Each chapter is carefully crafted to illustrate how an assault of the senses threatened…

From Edward's list on The best books about American battlefields.