TIME OF DESPAIR
DIANE MILLER SOMMERVILLE, a history professor at Binghamton University in New York, spent 14 years on her latest book, An Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War Era South. She focused on unearthing material tucked away in diaries, letters, and asylum records, rather than relying on the records of the military or political elites. While the evidence is too sparse to produce a quantitative snapshot of the incidence of suicide, she has assembled a wealth of details that provide context to suicides among not only soldiers and veterans, but civilians and freedpeople.
CWT: Why study suicide?
About 15 years ago, I was listening to a television show about depression and
