DIFFERENCES

About the Book

Differences is a wonderfully refreshing novel about the Anti-Bellum South and the Civil War. One of the first post Civil War novels, it has a different perspective on the period. It is a human document that comments on the foibles and failures of men and women in a most trying time. Its thrilling and compassionate battle and peacetime scenes anticipate by 70 years the dramatic impact of Gone of the Wind. Differences contrasts men and women of the South and the North, of Jews and non Jews, of northern Jews and southern Jews well integrated into their respective environments, of various types of Europeans in America and their counterpart immigrants of one, two, or three generations. Though evincing no overt critique of political attitudes or the economic structure of slavery, nor any recriminations for the terrible war just fought, Differences describes relations with slaves, those of the house and those of the fields, their loyalties to good masters, and their friendship to decent whites. Crossing not only racial boundaries, but class distinctions as well, Mayer notes that despite pre-war differences between white aristocrats and white “trash” both were quick to anger and revenge and would unite in a post-war insurgency against the newly freed slaves and their exploitive carpetbagger allies.

About the Author

The author was a Jewish surgeon, one of a number of Jewish doctors who served during the war. He was already a published author and poet before the war started and, at its outbreak, he returned from advanced medical studies in Europe to join his local regiment. Nathan Mayer served with distinction and was recognized for his contributions to his men during and after the war. His memorial poem graces the Connecticut 16th monument at Antietam. After demobilization he returned to Connecticut to set up medical practice where he became a leader among Hartford physicians until his death in 1912. During the first year he sat down to write this novel about the differences he experienced in America since his arrival in Cincinnati with his refugee father in the wake of the 1848 upheavals. Steven Bowman is Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Though h professional career specializes in Greek Jewry of all periods; this is his first foray into uncharted facets of the American Jewish scene.