Aberration of Mind

“Sommerville gives a well-researched, powerful monograph that paves the way for other historians doing research in this field. She presents the experience of suicide from many angles and grounds that examination in the words and experiences of southerners themselves. The resulting analysis is a valuable contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century American society, the impact of the Civil War on the South, and the understanding and treatment of mental illness in the Civil War era.”—H-Net Reviews

“A worthy contribution to the scholarship on the experiences of ordinary citizens during the Civil War era and to the literature on the trauma of war.”—Journal of Southern History

“Cutting across the pages is a skillful discussion and understanding of Civil War South, women’s history, racial history, and the history of medicine.”—Journal of American History

“Like the human mind, the subject matter of this work is deeply complex, yet Sommerville has produced an eminently readable analysis and made an important contribution that will doubtless become required reading for students and scholars of the Civil War era and the history of mental illness.”—Journal of Arizona History

“In recent years, the suicide rate among American soldiers in Afghanistan surpassed the rate of combat deaths, making work like Aberration of Mind enormously timely and important. War, we are learning, is not just destructive but self-destructive work. In combining the lenses of history, psychology, and medicine, this book takes us to the root of how and why war has, apparently for centuries, left deep mental scars in the minds of the people who waged it and the populations who experienced it. This incredibly arresting and richly researched book will remain significant for a long time to come.”—Stephen Berry, University of Georgia

“Sommerville’s research is robust, her evidence formidable, and her analysis insightful, probing the complex intersections of gender and race. This book is full of fresh interpretations—a timely and welcome addition to the scholarship.”—David Silkenat, University of Edinburgh

“The wages of war in the South of the 1860s and after went beyond the casualties of conflict and ravages of disease, beyond even the loss of wealth and resources. As Diane Sommerville demonstrates in this work of originality and sensitivity, the despair produced by catastrophic defeat and destruction caused many Southerners to take their own lives to escape the trials of a hopeless future. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of a dark result of the Civil War.”—James M. McPherson, Princeton University