My Brothers Face
by By Phillips, Charles and Axelrod, Alan
Category: History , General

The Civil War. Historians call it the first modern war. Men and boys marched by the thousands and tens of thousands into a conflict that would change the way wars were fought forever. Yet the vast majority of the combatants were neither professional soldiers, nor hired mercenaries. They were citizens - doctors, lawyers, farmers, clerks, and students - who found themselves in an unprecedented kind of combat, brother fighting brother, with the terrible new weapons of the Industrial Age.If the American Civil War was the first modern war, it was also the first war to be documented extensively with photographs. The old daguerrotype, ambro-type, and tintype processes, awkward and demanding though they were, produced remarkably sharp, beautifully modeled images that reach across the decades with undiminished emotional impact. My Brother's Face is a gallery of eighty unforgettable portraits, each introduced by an illuminating historical commentary and accompanied by passages from revealing letters, diaries, or other firsthand accounts expressing the thoughts and feelings of men, women, and boys far from home and in desperate conflict.An intimate view of four terrible years that forged our nation, My Brother's Face depicts the Civil War as seen through the eyes of both the famous and the unknown. Here are the faces of those who fought, those who died, and those who healed, all captured in startling, personal images.