Chapter 9 Mississippi: The Minié Ball Pregnancy Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 9 Horwitz visited Vicksburg, Mississippi, the site of a major Civil War siege. Vicksburg had been a small town on the Mississippi River at the time of the war, but in the intervening years the river had shifted so the town was several miles away. A canal had been built along the city's former waterfront and the town had seen an economic resurgence from riverboat casinos that floated on the canal.

Horwitz met a local pharmacist who had turned part of his business into a museum to display several items from his collection of Civil War artifacts. The pharmacist invited him to his home, where he looked at several more items and learned that the pharmacist and his wife were Jewish. There had been a significant Jewish population in Vicksburg...