Faust offers up her primary argument(s) in the Preface: Death transformed the American nation as well as the hundreds of thousand

Faust offers up her primary argument(s) in the Preface: “Death transformed the American nation as well as the hundreds of thousands of individuals directly affected by loss … The work of death was Civil War America’s most fundamental and most demanding undertaking” (xiii, xviii). Considering Faust closes her book with the following statement—“We still live in the world of death the Civil War created”—is her thesis accurate? Why or why not?

There is no right or wrong answer here, although you must augment your analytical and argumentative response with plenty of specific support from the text and some specific support from modern-day news headlines as well.

Steps:

1. Choose your answer carefully. Don’t settle on the first idea(s) that comes to mind. You want an answer full enough to explore, not one you will quickly gloss over. So, choosing the “easiest” answer here may not help you do the assignment very well, for example.
2. Write a preliminary draft and check to make sure you have answered the assignment prompt above directly with the proper depth of thought and analysis. AVOID first-person, “I” statements in this assignment: just state your position in the third person instead. Using the collective “we” or “us” in terms of society as a whole is acceptable, however.
3. Remember to challenge yourself to critically THINK about what you’re writing. Do not merely SUMMARIZE the book; analyze it instead in terms of the response(s) requested above. Use examples from the reading itself and other materials you’ve been exposed to prior to this class.