

# Event Details

- **Event Name**: W. Fitzhugh Brundage presents A FATE WORSE THAN HELL, with David Blight
- **Event Start and End Date**: Tue, 24 Feb, 2026 at 06:00 pm
- **Event Description**: From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, a harrowing new history of the Civil War’s prisoner of war camps, North and South.

Flyleaf will offer seating for up to 70 in-person guests, with priority access given to folks who purchase the book. Please indicate in the "Customer Comments" field (at checkout) if you’d like 1-2 seats held for you at the event!

If you do not plan to attend the event but would like a copy of the book signed for pickup or shipping, please use the comments field at checkout to specify your personalization preference (to your name, to another name, or just the author's signature).

It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war’s death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War’s prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization.

A Fate Worse Than Hell contemplates the roots and consequences of this mass incarceration from America’s bloodiest conflict. Based on first-person prisoner accounts, photographs, and contemporaneous journalism, historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage shows how POW camps were of far greater significance to the war than is commonly understood: a subject of stalled negotiation, escalating retaliation, and increasing political liability between the Union and the Confederacy. Brundage describes how the camps were not the products of improvisation, but the results of design and resolve, marshaling prodigious quantities of manpower, technology, and resources—with successor camps in every major war during the next century.

Brundage also shows how prisons such as Andersonville, Elmira, and Point Lookout were the catalyst for the United States’ first formal laws of war, which became a bedrock for international law. Nowhere during the Civil War was the juxtaposition between our “better angels” and our capacity for brutality starker than in the prison camps—sites of unprecedented atrocity that also served as places of selflessness and human dignity among the incarcerated. The most comprehensive work to date about the life of America’s captives during the Civil War, A Fate Worse Than Hell exposes this national violence that imprisoned more Americans during wartime than ever before or since.

W. Fitzhugh Brundage is the William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book, Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition. 

David W. Blight is Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the immediate past president of the Organization of American Historians (2024-2025). He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom; American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others. He writes frequently for the popular press, including the Atlantic, the New York Times, and many other journals.
- **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/chapel-hill/w-fitzhugh-brundage-presents-a-fate-worse-than-hell-with-david-blight/200029724734350
- **Event Categories**: art, literary-art, sports
- **Interested Audience**: 
  - total_interested_count: 4

## Ticket Details

- **Ticket URL**: https://flyleafbooks.com/event/brundage-2026?utm_source=AllEvents.in&utm_medium=event-discovery-platform&utm_campaign=chapel+hill-events

## Event venue details

- **city**: Chapel Hill
- **state**: NC
- **country**: United States
- **location**: 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd (Historic Airport Rd, Next to The Root Cellar), Chapel Hill, NC, United States, North Carolina 27514
- **lat**: 35.92442
- **long**: -79.05358
- **full address**: 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd (Historic Airport Rd, Next to The Root Cellar), Chapel Hill, NC, United States, North Carolina 27514

## Event Organizer details

- **affiliate_id**: 2
- **organizer**: Flyleaf Books (https://allevents.in/org/flyleaf-books/13054842)

## Event gallery

- **Alt text**: banner
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- **Alt text**: thumbnail
  - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events3/banners/a4d8103a12bbbbd5eb4f5e8b1d82111deec208ba8b59a26fe1230f93d133fbcd-rimg-w300-h300-dcc9aa7d-gmir?v=1771936249

## FAQs

- **Q**: When is the event happening?
  - **A:** Tue, 24 Feb, 2026 at 06:00 pm
- **Q**: Where is the event happening?
  - **A:** 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd (Historic Airport Rd, Next to The Root Cellar), Chapel Hill, NC, United States, North Carolina 27514
- **Q**: Who is organizing the event?
  - **A:** Flyleaf Books
- **Q**: What type of event is this?
  - **A:** art, literary-art, sports
- **Q**: Where can I find ticket details about W. Fitzhugh Brundage presents A FATE WORSE THAN HELL, with David Blight ?
  - **A:** You can find ticket details about this event on AllEvents.

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