Walter Edgar's Journal

Dr. Mark M. Smith, of the University of South Carolina, returns to The Journal to talk about his book The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2014). No other book has looked at the Civil War through the prism of the five senses, or considered their impact on various groups of indviduals. Smith is widely considered America's leading practitioner of the new and burgeoning field of "sensory history." Using engaging accounts from diaries, letters, and journals Smith gives readers a first-hand glimpse of the experience of the Civil War.