Reviewed by the Editor
In IJRT Issue 30, 2018
The author takes the reader on multiple journeys to the Civil War, believing it to be the primary source of the polarized thinking that haunts America today. He provides the potential for healing on both the individual and collective levels by investigating the Civil War in reference to past lives of seventeen individuals living today. He shows how limitations create intense anguish for both the present and past-life personae through an insistence on one-dimensional, stereotyped perspectives about self and other; failure to acknowledge and integrate the Shadow side of the psyche; inability to hold seemingly incompatible perceptions together while staying grounded; and profound lack of empathy for warring internal dimensions and alienated external selves. The past-life individuals Mancini investigates includes men and women, children and adults, Federals and Confederates, slaves and freedmen, doctors and deserters, and soldiers and civilian—all equally overwhelmed by fear and agony over the devastation and extreme carnage of this monumental war.