Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, early July 1863 1863 Timothy H. O Sullivan captures a photograph of the bodies of

soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. This photo the Harvest Death, is one of the most famous war photographs in US history.

If you don't know the name of the photo or even the name of the photographer, there is a good chance you know this image.

Several bodies strewn in the foreground, lying dead on a

gentle slope, and then as you look further and further into the photo, more and more bodies

receding into the distance. There are a couple people on horseback roaming

around in the middle distance, presumably survivors, but even they appear as

ghosts in this photograph in a Here are the dreadful details. Let them aid in preventing such another calamity falling upon the nation.

Timothy O'Sullivan is maybe best known for these Civil War photographs,

but after the war he did what many Civil War vets did he went

west he traveled the frontier capturing the landscape in a series of mysterious sometimes

forgotten and always stunning photographs and now there is a new book from one of my absolute favorite authors about

Timothy O'Sullivan and these Western photos.

It is called Double Exposure Resurveying the West with Timothy O'Sullivan America's most mysterious war photographer,

and the author of that book is Robert Sullivan, who has written books like Rats and

Meadolands and a whale hunt, tons of brilliant pieces for the New Yorker

and the New York Times magazine and like a lot of his work which I adore this new book is a mix of history

memoir analysis it is really great and it's an honestly an honor to have

Robert Sullivan on the show to talk about Timothy O Sullivan so Bob welcome to the

show thank you very much thank you very much for that yes you do write about Sullivan and O Sullivan, so we will get into that maybe.

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