Mon. Feb. 11

 Can we ever get enough of the Civil War? Ken Burns gave us the thorough still-picture video-and-history treatment; there are battle re-enactments everywhere; there's this endless fascination and anger, still, about this war that nearly drove the country apart. (It's a lingering theme in westerns; we just saw the "3:10 To Yuma" film and among things we learned anew int he bonus features was that the outlaw mentality of the old West was largely formed by Southern soldiers whose land and been grabbed, whose lives had been shaken. Newly named Harvard Univesity President and historian Drew Gilpin Faust has written "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War," in which she grabbles with the meaning of death as no scholar has done previously. That is, she studies our struggle to comprehend the meaning of practicalities of death in the face of unprecedented carnage. What we know from what we've learned: A gun shot was often fatal because of what medicine lacked in the day, and the sheer bloodiness and butchery was astonishing. Faust discusses her book and signes copies at the Harvard Coop Mon. Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. Free.

1400 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-499-2000 www.thecoop.com