Count the Dead
Coroners, Quants, and the Birth of Death as We Know It
By Stephen Berry
140 pp., 5.5 x 8.5, 9 halftones, 1 graph, notes, index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6752-2
Published: May 2022 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6751-5
Published: May 2022 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-6753-9
Published: February 2022 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6230-3
Published: February 2022
Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era
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Stephen Berry shows how a network of coroners, court officials, and state and federal authorities developed methods to track and reveal patterns of dying. These officials harnessed these records to turn the collective dead into informants and in so doing allowed the dead to shape life and death as we know it today.
About the Author
Stephen Berry is Gregory Professor of the Civil War Era at University of Georgia.
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Reviews
"Count the Dead reverberates . . . [it] begs us to reckon the past...In an era in which counting the dead has emerged with renewed urgency, Berry’s excellent book should sting our consciences."—The Civil War Monitor
“[Berry] theorizes about why counting the dead is important. Counting the dead should make the dead count; their deaths ought to be useful for something. . . . Berry gives the reader some ideas worth thinking about.”—Journal of Southern History
“Count the Dead. . . presents new perspectives on the evolution of datafication and death records. Berry argues that the systemization of statistics proved critical not just for the demographic transition but also for other societal changes in the United States, such as the civil rights movement. With this perspective, the book can be highly recommended.”—H-Sci-Med-Tech
"Lyrical, insightful, original, important, compelling. Count the Dead is one of the most refreshing history books that I have read in years."—Jason Phillips, author of Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future
"In this arresting, timely book, Stephen Berry argues that data is power and naming is accountability. Count the Dead, a call to action, insists that we find meaning in death."—Diane Miller Sommerville, Binghamton University