Open Access Edition of Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South by Diane Miller Sommerville

FAIN: DR-280007-21

University of North Carolina Press, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288)
Mark Simpson-Vos (Project Director: December 2020 to October 2022)

This project will publish the book Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South, written by NEH Fellow Diane Miller Sommerville (NEH grant number FB-55859-11), in an electronic open access format under a Creative Commons license, making it available for free download and distribution. The author will be paid a royalty of at least $500 upon release of the open access ebook.

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South
Year: 2018
ISBN: 97814696435
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Author: Diane Miller Sommerville
Editor: Chuck Grench
Abstract: More than 150 years after its end, we still struggle to understand the full extent of the human toll of the Civil War and the psychological crisis it created. In Aberration of Mind, Diane Miller Sommerville offers the first book-length treatment of suicide in the South during the Civil War era, giving us insight into both white and black communities, Confederate soldiers and their families, as well as the enslaved and newly freed. With a thorough examination of the dynamics of both racial and gendered dimensions of psychological distress, Sommerville reveals how the suffering experienced by Southerners living in a war zone generated trauma that, in extreme cases, led some Southerners to contemplate or act on suicidal thoughts. Sommerville recovers previously hidden stories of individuals exhibiting suicidal activity or aberrant psychological behavior she links to the war and its aftermath. This work adds crucial nuance to our understanding of how personal suffering shaped the way southerners viewed themselves in the Civil War era and underscores the full human costs of war.
Primary URL: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469643304/aberration-of-mind/
Primary URL Description: UNC Press
Secondary URL: https://www.amazon.com/Aberration-Mind-Suicide-Suffering-War-Era-ebook/dp/B07BB5W66G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1537989381&sr=1-1&keywords=9781469643571
Secondary URL Description: Kindle
URL 3: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/aberration-of-mind-diane-miller-sommerville/1128220028?ean=9781469643571
URL 3 Description: Nook
URL 4: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469643588_sommerville?item_view=book_info
URL 4 Description: JSTOR
URL 5: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/61411
URL 5 Description: Project Muse
Type: Single author monograph

Prizes

Willie Lee Rose Prize
Date: 11/9/2019
Organization: Southern Association for Women Historians

Finalist, 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Date: 4/15/2019
Organization: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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