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Watch the news, open a newspaper, turn on the radio, visit a newsstand, eavesdrop on conversation at a local restaurant — wherever you go, it’s hard to ignore the fact that American men and women are losing their lives on foreign soil.

If you’ve got a loved one in Iraq, read on — but with caution.

No matter where a soldier dies, he or she leaves someone at home, someone who dreads getting a visit from a uniformed chaplain or grim-faced officer. But almost a hundred fifty years ago, if you lost a loved one to battle, you may’ve never gotten closure on your loss. No body, no personal effects, no confirmation, and no grave to visit. In “This Republic of Suffering” by Drew Gilpin Faust, you’ll read about death on the battlefields of the Civil War.

In early Victorian times, Americans believed in “Good Death”; that is, a death where one gave up the soul “gladly and wilfully” and resisted worldly attachment. Death was, in today’s context, almost romantic in its sentimentality.

“Dying,” says Faust, “was an art.”

When the War Between the States started in 1861, everyone initially believed that the fighting wouldn’t last long, that their side would prevail in short order, and that casualties would be minimal. Politicians and military officials vowed that every man killed in battle would be retrieved, identified, and returned to his loved ones.

Nobody expected the extreme carnage of war.

In the aftermath of battle, mangled bodies littered fields; amputated limbs piled near hospitals; and bullet-ridden soldiers “disappeared”, leaving little-to-nothing for identity or burial. One report claimed that, after Shiloh, it was impossible walk across an open field without stepping on a dead body. The dead often lay in fields for years before recovery.

But the war itself wasn’t the only danger. Measles, mumps, typhoid, dysentery, and other communicable diseases killed hundreds of thousands.

Toward the end of the war, Faust says, efforts were made to identify the dead and notify the families.

Clara Barton (of the Red Cross) and poet Walt Whitman tried to put a number on the casualties. Regiment leaders were asked to furnish lists of missing, dead, and wounded, but even that wasn’t enough. Faust writes of anguished parents who went to their own graves without knowing what happened to their sons.

At a time when DNA testing is available and the goal is to never have another Unknown Soldier, “This Republic of Suffering” is shocking in its historical context.

Author Drew Gilpin Faust points out that casualties during the Civil War exceeded that of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars and the Korea War combined. Considering today’s sad commonness of flags at half-mast, that number is mind-boggling.

Although “This Republic of Suffering” is sometimes a bit dry and definitely a bit gory, it’s also an intriguingly unusual twist on the genre. If you’re a Civil War buff, historian, or if you love military stories, you’ll want to fight to find this book.

So you say you had lots of people at your house during the holidays.

For days, you bust your tail making hors d’oeuvres, obsessed over the liquid libations list, and cleaned the house until the living room was lovely, family room was fabulous, and dining room dazzled.

And where did the guests congregate?

Yep, in the kitchen.

According to author Steven Gdula, there’s a reason for that. In the new book “The Warmest Room

in the House”, you’ll eat up what

he has to say.

If you were suddenly transported back a century in time, and you walked into the kitchen, you might barely recognize it. For one thing, cabinets didn’t exist in the form you have in your kitchen now.

Instead, the room might’ve contained a “Hoosier”, which stored manual cooking tools and flour, but it wasn’t attached to the walls. If you had electricity, lights extended your meal-making time. Gas stoves were new-fangled and you’d be lucky to afford one. “Refrigerator” wasn’t a common word.

Off to the side of the kitchen (or maybe in an earthen sub-room), you’d have found shelves of jeweled jars of food, usually “put up” by the woman of the house and whatever children she could coerce into helping. Food was mostly grown or raised nearby, if not at home.

This all was, of course, if the kitchen was even attached to the house itself. Making a hot meal during the summertime wasn’t exactly something you wanted to do near the main living quarters before the advent of air conditioning.

But manufacturers and scientists were busy cooking up new ideas for American palates. In the Roaring Twenties pre-packaged foods were an appealing novelty and sugar was suddenly cheap, dramatically raising the consumption of candy and soft drinks. Two decades later, sugar (as well as meat and coffee) was rationed and everyone had a Victory Garden. By the mid-70s, dieting was big, we had cyclamates, and new appliances allowed latchkey children to have dinner ready by the time their working parents got home.

Know somebody who’s hungry for a different kind of home-and-garden book? Then fork over “The Warmest Room in the House”. Author Steven Gdula has cooked up a tasty history of food and home, but what makes this most enjoyable is the way Gdula wraps current events around the things Americans had on their plates.

Seeing a chaptered timeline of the products that landed on countertops over the past 100 years is enjoyable, too. A century ago, cooks didn’t have pop-up toasters or Pop Tarts. Coffee and tea weren’t sold in little bags. Meals could take hours to make and dishes were done by hand in the sink. Most meals were eaten at home because fast-food wasn’t invented yet.

Be aware that there are no recipes in here, but that doesn’t make this any less fun. If you’re a foodie, a pop-culture historian, or if you’d love to bite into a good book about something unusual, “The Warmest Room in the House” is the book to serve up.

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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.