Ruin Nation

An important new contribution to nineteenth-century cultural history, environmental history, Civil War history, and American studies scholarship. Among the book’s many strengths are its interdisciplinary approach, showing a sophisticated understanding of fields ranging from visual culture to gender studies to the history of science; a truly impressive base of archival research; a very clear writing style; and a subtle suggestion of the topic’s present-day resonance and relevance.

* author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism *

Nelson brings a truly original set of problems and questions to a thoroughly canvassed period of U.S. history. Engaging, deeply researched, and lucidly and fluently written, her book is bound to interest scholars and a broader readership alike.

* author of Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination *

Megan Kate Nelson has found a fresh way to consider the destruction caused by the Civil War. In often compelling prose, she uses the idea of ruins to consider how we construct meaning from chaos and loss. Through this concept she explores the scars left by combat on not only objects like homes but also on people, such as amputees. In the symbolism of ruins, she finds the intersection of how we cope with what war destroys and what it creates. The book is an intriguing application of cultural analysis to one of the centerpieces of our national narrative.

* Director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Pennsylvania State University *

An interesting read for those interested in the effects of the war on civilians [as] well as soldiers, and its longer term influence on society.

Nelson’s compelling argument is a great addition to the narrative on the American Civil War, and the impressive research upon which she bases her writing lends significant clout to her well-written and structured work. . . . Nelson’s work presents a fresh set of questions from which scholars can pursue future inquiries.

* Southern Historian *

Ruin Nation is original, sophisticated, and persuasive, giving us a new lens through which we can focus our attention on significant aspects of the Civil War that we have never seen with such clarity. It should be read, and reread, by anyone hoping to understand what the war did to America, as opposed to what it did for it; what ruination meant to those who lived through it; and how it influenced the ways in which Americans since have viewed the central moment in our history.

* Civil War Book Review *

In her masterfully written and well-documented study of Civil War ruins, Megan Kate Nelson brings into high relief the tension between what the war destroyed and what it created. . . . Ruin Nation is an illuminating and engaging study of how Americans processed the devastation wrought by a bloody and destructive war.

* Register of the Kentucky Historical Society *

Nelson effectively entwines cultural, gender, environmental, and military history in order to offer a unique perspective on war’s destructiveness.

* Arkansas Historical Review