University President Drew G. Faust discusses her book, “This Republic of Suffering,” at the COOP yesterday evening.

University President Drew G. Faust presented her newest book, “This Republic of Suffering,” to a packed Harvard Coop last night, drawing over 100 listeners as she detailed the work about the “grim” subject of death and the “emerging inhumanity” of the nation’s battlefields during the American Civil War.

The book—Faust’s sixth, and, she says, her last—caps off a productive career in which she has taken novel looks at the social and human impacts of the Civil War.

Despite the fact that Faust began her research while still on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, her investigations frequently brought her to Harvard, where she studied the lives of graduates who had fought in the war.
“One of the first times I walked into Memorial Hall, I looked up and saw the name of someone I knew quite well—someone whose papers I’d read, whose death I knew all about,” said Faust, who spoke beneath the seals of Harvard’s 11 schools that ring the Coop’s balcony.

Faust also recounted how she unraveled the mystery of another Harvard graduate—Edmund Whitman, class of 1838—with the help of a former Radcliffe colleague last week.

Whitman, the colleague informed Faust, was her husband’s great-great-grandfather.

Despite the macabre subject matter, Faust managed to elicit more than a few chuckles from the crowd.

In response to one audience member, who said that her book seemed to “deliberately leave out gory details,” Faust responded with bemused surprise.

“It’s interesting that you’d react that way,” she remarked, “because I’ve had some reviews that said ‘what’s the matter with you?’”

And when she was praised by local television host “Brother Blue”—who likened her book to the Gettysburg Address—Faust responded with modesty.

“You can’t say anything more nice about me,” Faust said to hearty laughter as she cut Blue off.

But even after Blue’s approbation, Faust reaffirmed that her duties as president would likely prevent her from ever writing another book.

“In a sense it’s sort of a good stopping point,” she said after the event. “If I were a professor, I’d be searching for a new book topic. But instead, I have a new role.”

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strauss@fas.harvard.edu.