The Killer Angels: A Novel (Paperback)

Similar to "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Red Badge of Courage", the reader is given a first hand account of what it is like to have lived through this major historical turning point of the war. What would otherwise be dry, cold hard facts becomes a living event, felt and experienced in all of its glory, gory details, and sadness. The human emotions of hope, longing, courage, deprivation, fatigue, love, loyalty, regrets and faith in God is clearly shown. Anyone who wants to learn more about the Civil War but was hesitant ... should read this book, which makes history come alive. I was so capitvated, I bought the sequels, written by the author's son, Jeff Shaara, who continued the writing tradition started by his late father. One readily appreciates how fragile a gift is freedom and democracy, it is not to be taken for granted. The United States as a nation underwent one of the most tragic events in its history ... to maintain unity and integrity ... this should never be forgotten.
Erika Borsos (bakonyvilla)

Shaara's son Jeff has published a Civil War prequel and sequel to his father's book, but those volumes cover more than a single battle and the focus on a limited number of characters does not work as well. Still, I appreciate that the rest of Chamberlain's story is developed, since it is the college professor from Maine who emerges from both "The Killer Angels" and the Ken Burns PBS documentary on "The Civil War" as the idealized citizen-soldier of the war. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of both this novel and its film, are that they make the defense of Little Round Top by the 20th Maine the high point of the Battle of Gettysburg rather than Pickett's Charge, and that it is the name of Armistead rather than Pickett that we will not forget from that most famous charge. It also serves as a poignant reminder of what Buford did on the first day, before the big names and the rest of the two armies arrived at Gettysburg.

"The Killer Angels" deserves its reputation as the finest Civil War battle novel because it gives us more of a look at the psychology of these leaders than we can get from a history book. While Armistead did not really survive the battle and Buford would be dead by the end of the year, the other three lived long enough to leave behind their versions of what happened those fateful days in July 1863. Shaara goes along with Longstreet's view that Pickett's Charge was a mistake, but in terms of the book's narrative that logic gives way to the charisma of Lee's leadership, just as it did that fateful day. But that is valid since the great tragedy of the American Civil War is that the emotions that fueled the Southern Confederacy were ground down by the inevitable logic of the Union's advantages in terms of population, industry, and everything else. Even if the Army of Northern Virginia had won at Gettysburg it never could have taken Washington, Grant would have still come East to take command of the Union Armies, and all that would have changed was the time and place of Lee's inevitable surrender. What Shaara accomplishes in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel is to allow us to understand why the Rebel troops who marched towards the clump of trees at the Angle would have thought otherwise and believed it with all their hearts, minds and souls.