s well-known and brutally concise statement of the essence of war serves to set the theme of Jonathan M. Steplyk's study of the nature of killing in Civil War combat. Utilizing wartime and postwar accounts of participants, a number of which are quite familiar to Civil War readers, Steplyk analyzes this peculiar and ultimate experience of war from the point of view of the men who were necessarily tasked with killing their erstwhile countrymen.