When I was 12 years old, I read the book Andersonville..

[Freedomofspeech]

768 pages about the prison in Georgia. Other girls were reading Nancy Drew (I, too, loved Nancy Drew.) It was only open from 1864 to 1865 and over 13,000 Northern soldiers lost their lives. At the age of 12, I learned to hate war. At the age of 15, my best friend and brother was killed in another worthless war....that is why I am a peace monger. Now the idiot piece of garbage who is squatting in the White House wants to go to war with Iran. Put him and his sons on the front line, please.

[beveeheart]

1. That book made an impression on me too and I was 13 when I read it in 1956.

[mitch96]

2. I read that more men died of disease during the Civil War than in combat...

Andersonville in the south and Camp Douglas in Chicago were hell holes. Another example of man's inhumanity to man.... The glory of war my ass...
m

[GeoWilliam750]

4. Indeed, at a rate of about 2-3 deaths from illness for every one death from battle wounds

[rusty quoin]

3. I'm a peace monger by another route. War is obscene.

[Shrike47]

5. Andersonville is a novel that had an enormous impact on me, too, in my early teens.

[Stuart G]

6. "Put him and his sons on the front line, please." Last sentence says it all.....

All of Trump son's and his daughter in front line, and....open the curtain...no war...imagine that?

[Stuart G]

7. Another reason to be a someone in favor of "peace"...32 minutes. Night and Fog.

about the same thing. A documentary on Nazi concentration camps. But one might argue, the only way to beat the Nazis and close those camps was to go to war. That is an ugly thought. But probably true.
...Another one: during WWII, the Nazis killed 20,000,000 Russians in their invasion.

...Another one
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Elie-Wiesel/dp/0374500010

about living in a Nazi concentration camp. You will not sleep after either the above movie, Night and Fog, or the book below:

...Elie Wiesel: The Night

About Night and Fog, 32 minutes. I showed it to my students over a period of about 8 or 9 years. So I saw it maybe 40 or 45 times. 5 classes each year, and 8 or 9 times throughout my career. It is horrific beyond any movie you can imagine. And it is real. As are those piles of dead bodies.

[Xipe Totec]

8. At 12 I was reading "Miracle Drugs - The History of Antibiotics" nt

[sinkingfeeling]

9. I read it at the same age! It has some extremely brutal and

sexual scenes in it. I had to use a dictionary to look up some of the anatomical words.

[cwydro]

10. Who was the author if you remember?

I decided to look that book up so I could get it, but there are several with different authors.

I think I read the one you’re referring to also, but I can’t remember the author.

[KatyaR]

13. It's MacKinlay Kantor.

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[cwydro]

16. Thanks!

[KG]

11. a song...

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

12. In 1970 PBS aired a great version of The Andersonville Trial

A cast full of the great character actors of the time, including William Shatner as the prosecutor and what seems like a 15-year old Martin Sheen. Directed by George C. Scott. Outstanding programming for TV of that era.

[llmart]

14. That sort of history was never taught to us in school.

At least not at my school. We only learned all the rah-rah, we beat the Nazis, post-WWII history they wanted us to know. My high school American History teacher was a conservative Republican and she would talk about WWII in an almost orgasmic voice which creeped me out. You would have thought war was the most exciting thing to ever happen to a person.

Ugh. I was a pacifist even before I got to her class. Fortunately for me my parents were both pacificists and I trusted them more than her.

[Freedomofspeech]

17. I read it on my own...

I became a high school librarian because so many books impacted me as a kid. We were never taught anything
About it in class.

[Paladin]

15. That's about the age at which I read it. Brilliant, lacerating book.

"Spirit Lake" is another Mackinlay Kantor novel that's worth your time.