Synopses & Reviews
Mathew B. Brady mobilized his own corps - a corps of photographers - at the outset of the Civil War. He was determined to record the war photographically and present it to the American public. Photographic work on this epic scale was a completely original concept.
Images of battlefield devastation, such as those taken at Antietam, were exhibited just days after the battle and caused an immediate sensation. War was no longer comfortably remote, but graphic, immediate, and horrific.
Brady had hoped that a grateful nation would pay him handsomely for his efforts. But once the war was over, the public spurned the harrowing images the photographer had taken such risks to obtain. Even the sale of his archive did not prevent Brady from dying penniless, and largely unacknowledged, in 1896.
Brady's unique record of the Civil War gives modern readers a fascinating insight into the terrible maelstrom that shaped our nation.