Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921

Shannon Bontrager has written an intricate, impressive book about mourning, memory, and national identity. Some facets of his story are familiar, but he extends the sweep of his analysis in fresh and provocative directions, enlarging it, as the title suggests, to the edges of the American empire. At the core of the book is the evolution of the commemoration of the fallen citizen soldier from the advent of mass casualties during the American Civil War through the carnage of World War One. Keen to honor dead soldiers who had been deprived of the comforts of death within the bosom of their families, the Civil War generation expended impressive energy and resources to consecrate their graves through a system of national cemeteries..