In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.

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'In the nineteenth century, we beat the British more than once,' Afghans often told me. 'In the twentieth century, we beat the Russians. In the twenty-first, if we have to, we'll beat the Americans!'

— William T. Vollmann

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Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.

— Drew Gilpin Faust

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Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.

— Benito Mussolini

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The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

— Umberto Eco

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The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

— W. E. B. Du Bois

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