Reddit reviews This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library)

Not a direct answer, but if you want the American point-of-view during the same time period, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War and the companion PBS film

Faust is her name. Read the book. It is a good look at the history of the war.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0375703837/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/185-0712842-0048500

This book expands some on that topic: http://www.amazon.com/This-Republic-Suffering-American-Vintage/dp/0375703837

Great read, and PBS created a documentary based on its contents.

EDIT: Upon re-reading, I see you already referenced this book, so I'll just leave the link for those interested in checking it out. My bad.

There's a great book that just came out focusing on the nature of the OP's question: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War

From the description:
Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation, describing how the survivors managed on a practical level.

James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is immediately the first book that comes to mind. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it is “the book” to read on the Civil War. It is a highly readable account of the build-up to the Civil War, causes, and the war itself. It also won a Pulitzer Prize. For more, I’d also check out Ta-Nehisi Coate’s online book club on Battle Cry of Freedom over at The Atlantic.

Other excellent works on the period I would recommend are:

• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin: an account of the Lincoln administration during the war years
  
  
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner: details Lincoln’s career and his relationship and views on slavery.
  
  
• Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine: takes a look at the southern plantation economy and its destruction in the Civil War
  
  
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust: Harvard President and historian Faust looks at how the nation collectively dealt with the death of 600,000 young men and the national trauma of the war
  
  
• Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams: an older book, but still a classic on the Union command structure and Lincoln’s difficulty in choosing an effective commander for the Union Army
  
  
• Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy: for the military side of the conflict without much historiography
  
  Also, the Civil War produced some of the greatest memoirs in American letters:
  
  
• Grant’s Memoirs: written after his presidency with the assistance of Mark Twain, who later compared them to Caesar’s Commentaries
  
  
• Sherman’s Memoirs: called by literary critic Edmund Wilson a fascinating and disturbing account of an "appetite for warfare" that "grows as it feeds on the South"
  
  
• The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis: a massive tome of a book in which Davis lays out his rational for secession (in hindsight) and upon which much of the Lost Cause mythology would later be based
  
  And, I always recommend reading poetry and fiction, so I would also encourage you to look at Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, as well as the war poetry of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, particularly Melville’s poem The Martyr, written days after Lincoln’s assassination. More contemporary fiction would be Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, or EL Doctorow’s The March.
  
  Finally, check out David Blight’s Open Yale Lectures on the Civil War. Prof. Blight is a fantastic lecturer. They are free, and the course syllabus is online, and in 26 hours you can take a full Yale course completely on your own.
  

I see what you're saying, but there is a difference in what's possible and how we should be reacting to the tragedies in our world. When people are unemployed and suffering, telling them to have a more positive attitude is pretty evil. It's more that it's possible to be happy in the face of suffering, but it takes a heroic level of courage and striving for happiness to reach that kind of level.

Here's one example. I read a book recently on the Civil War. A story that was often repeated was that as men lay dying on the battlefield, their concern was not their suffering and near death, but instead they urgently wanted to get a message to their family that they died believing in Jesus Christ. You see many examples like this through history that happiness wins even through suffering. It seems pretty astounding to think of that, you'd like when you're dying your primary concern would be your pain and you might be angry that you died so young and so far from home.

https://www.amazon.com/This-Republic-Suffering-American-Vintage/dp/0375703837

Nature's Metropolis by Bill Cronon - fascinating story about how Chicago developed into the urban powerhouse it is today

The Name of War by Jill Lepore - a history of King Philip's War of the 17th century, a profoundly bloody conflict between colonists + Indians

This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust - history of death and suffering in the Civil War (LOVE this book)

The Circus Age, by Janet Davis - a political and cultural history of the circus during the 19th century

Segregating Sound by Karl Hagstrom Miller - how pop music developed from racial categorization

74,000 vs 147,000 according to very respected US historians. Pretty easy to corroborate. Edit: Combat deaths is what I count, not disease.

Read a book read a book read a mother fuckin' book.