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The Gettysburg Nobody Knows
On the first three days of July in 1863, more than 160,000 Union and Rebel soldiers fought a monumental battle in Gettysburg, a bloody contest that has been hailed as "the turning point of the Civil War." It is without a doubt the best known engagement of the war and may in fact be the best
known battle in American military history. It is certainly the most studied battle Americans have ever fought in. And yet, for all its prominence, this singular moment in our history still stirs heated debate. Did Jeb Stuart's absence leave General Lee blind? Should Ewell have attacked Cemetery
Hill? Was Joshua Chamberlain really the hero of Little Round Top? How close did the Confederates come to winning at Gettysburg? And if the Confederates had won, how would history have been different?
Now, Gabor Boritt, the director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, has invited nine leading authorities to shed new light on the greatest battle in our history. Following the example of Richard Nelson Current's acclaimed history The Lincoln Nobody Knows , the contributors focus
in particular on the unknown, the controversial, and what might have been. Readers learn, for instance, that though Jeb Stuart's cavalry provided no intelligence to the rebel army for several key days, Lee knew from other sources the location of the Army of the Potomac and he was able to concentrate
his army before General Meade arrived at the battlefield in strength. Readers are treated to a fresh account of "the most celebrated forty minutes in all of American military history"--Pickett's Charge--watching that famed encounter from a perspective rarely the point of view of Union
soldiers. There are careful analyses of the battlefield actions of General Ewell (whose failure to attack Cemetery Hill has been blamed for the South's loss at Gettysburg) and of General Daniel Sickles (whose dangerous repositioning of troops on July 2nd has been credited with stopping Longstreet's
advance): Ewell is exonerated here, Sickles criticized for probably causing more Union losses than necessary. And throughout the volume, there is much vivid writing, such as a stirring account of the moment when General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered the First Minnesota to "take those colors,"
sending the Minnesotans into a desperate struggle that would cost most of them their lives but would help save the day for the Union.
Well over a century has gone by since the guns fell silent at Gettysburg. Yet every year millions of tourists make the pilgrimage to this venerable site, to see for themselves the spot where thousands died so that the Union could be preserved. The Gettysburg Nobody Knows offers a marvelous
reconsideration of this epic event. It will be must reading for the legions of Civil War buffs around the country and for everyone interested in American history.
known battle in American military history. It is certainly the most studied battle Americans have ever fought in. And yet, for all its prominence, this singular moment in our history still stirs heated debate. Did Jeb Stuart's absence leave General Lee blind? Should Ewell have attacked Cemetery
Hill? Was Joshua Chamberlain really the hero of Little Round Top? How close did the Confederates come to winning at Gettysburg? And if the Confederates had won, how would history have been different?
Now, Gabor Boritt, the director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, has invited nine leading authorities to shed new light on the greatest battle in our history. Following the example of Richard Nelson Current's acclaimed history The Lincoln Nobody Knows , the contributors focus
in particular on the unknown, the controversial, and what might have been. Readers learn, for instance, that though Jeb Stuart's cavalry provided no intelligence to the rebel army for several key days, Lee knew from other sources the location of the Army of the Potomac and he was able to concentrate
his army before General Meade arrived at the battlefield in strength. Readers are treated to a fresh account of "the most celebrated forty minutes in all of American military history"--Pickett's Charge--watching that famed encounter from a perspective rarely the point of view of Union
soldiers. There are careful analyses of the battlefield actions of General Ewell (whose failure to attack Cemetery Hill has been blamed for the South's loss at Gettysburg) and of General Daniel Sickles (whose dangerous repositioning of troops on July 2nd has been credited with stopping Longstreet's
advance): Ewell is exonerated here, Sickles criticized for probably causing more Union losses than necessary. And throughout the volume, there is much vivid writing, such as a stirring account of the moment when General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered the First Minnesota to "take those colors,"
sending the Minnesotans into a desperate struggle that would cost most of them their lives but would help save the day for the Union.
Well over a century has gone by since the guns fell silent at Gettysburg. Yet every year millions of tourists make the pilgrimage to this venerable site, to see for themselves the spot where thousands died so that the Union could be preserved. The Gettysburg Nobody Knows offers a marvelous
reconsideration of this epic event. It will be must reading for the legions of Civil War buffs around the country and for everyone interested in American history.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published November 13, 1997
12 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Gabor S. Boritt
27 books9 followersGabor S. Boritt was the Robert Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 3, 2025
The Gettysburg battle and the Pennsylvania Campaign of the American Civil War have inspired about 65,000 books – and yet there are still new things to be said about the three-day battle that turned the tide of the Civil War in the East. Such is the message of The Gettysburg Nobody Knows, a 1997 collection of Gettysburg-focused historical essays, edited by Gabor Boritt of (appropriately) Gettysburg College.
Boritt, who was Director of Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute at the time when The Gettysburg Nobody Knows was published, has brought a particularly interesting perspective to American Civil War history. Born into a Jewish family in Budapest during the Second World War, Boritt is a Holocaust survivor; members of his family died at Auschwitz. Boritt himself fought in the Hungarian Revolution against Soviet rule in 1956 – and, like many Hungarians of those times, was forced to leave Hungary after the U.S.S.R.’s Red Army crushed the revolution. All of that life experience gave him a truly unique way of looking at the United States’ experience of civil war, as I found when I heard him speak at a Smithsonian Institution event in Washington, D.C., sometime in the 1990’s.
The authors of the nine essays brought together for The Gettysburg Nobody Knows constitute a veritable all-star team of Civil War scholars, including Joseph Glatthaar, Richard McMurry, Harry Pfanz, Carol Reardon, and Emory Thomas. Readers who have experienced the books written by these scholars will no doubt enjoy the opportunity to appreciate their work in the more intimate scale of an historical essay.
Glenn LaFantasie in “Joshua Chamberlain and the American Dream” considers how Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who commanded the 20th Maine Infantry in the crucial fight for Little Round Top on the battle’s second day, became a singularly revered figure in the 20th century, because of three works: John J. Pullen’s history The Twentieth Maine (1957); Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels (1974), which drew in large part on Pullen’s portrayal; and Ronald Maxwell’s film Gettysburg (1993), an adaptation of Shaara’s novel that spends most of its first half on a laudatory portrayal of Chamberlain.
In Twilight at Little Round Top, LaFantasie spends considerable time making sure that other prominent Union officers from Little Round Top – General Strong Vincent, for example – get their fair share of credit. Of the modern, heroic image of Chamberlain that currently prevails, LaFantasie writes that “it is our need for heroes…that has enabled Chamberlain to achieve the glory he longed for throughout the war and [for] most of his life” (p. 55).
Kent Gramm, in “The Chances of War: Lee, Longstreet, Sickles, and the First Minnesota Volunteers,” engages one of the most dramatic moments of the second day of the battle: when 262 soldiers of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment charged a Confederate brigade with five times the number of men, in order for the hard-pressed Union line on that portion of Cemetery Ridge to find time to bring up reinforcements. The 1st Minnesota did their job, and the Union line held, and the reinforcements were found, but the costs were high: 215 of those 262 men, including the colonel commanding the unit and almost all of his captains, were killed, wounded, or missing when the day was done – a casualty rate of 82 percent.
In his carefully documented essay, Gramm incorporates testimony from participants on all sides, discusses the psychology of soldiers on the battlefield, and even incorporates elements of chaos theory; yet what I found moving and powerful from this essay was its peroration, wherein Gramm acknowledges the sheer mystery of what makes soldiers like those of the 1st Minnesota do something that seems so impossible:
Neither historical, military, nor psychological “analysis” can resolve the mystery….We are left, finally, with that unanalyzable element present continually in history and in our own lives. We are not left with understanding. We are in the presence of mystery – mystery that has great power over great events, and over each of us. As the First Minnesota had a choice, so now a choice is ours: despair or awe. We can resign ourselves to the absurd, or, like Moses at the burning bush, we can put off the shoes from our feet, knowing that we stand on holy ground. (p. 100)
I always enjoy those works of Civil War history that take the reader beyond the battlefield, to help the reader understand the civilian experience of the Civil War period. The Gettysburg Nobody Knows delivers in that regard as well, particularly through the essay “Gettysburg’s Gettysburg: What the Battle Did to the Borough,” by J. Matthew Gallman with Susan Baker. In this essay, Gallman and Baker make clear that the borough of Gettysburg, like Adams County generally, was a microcosm for the Northern U.S. society of which it was a part.
Residents of Gettysburg and Adams County, like people across the North, rallied to the national colours after the firing on Fort Sumter, with young men signing up for Union Army service and noncombatants contributing their money and volunteering their time. Yet “Gettysburg’s general enthusiasm for the war effort, reflected in both enlisting and voluntarism, masked deep political divisions” (p. 156) of the type that existed in many Northern communities throughout the war period.
What made Gettysburg different, of course, is that it was the only Northern U.S. community that became the site of a major battle of the American Civil War. When the Confederates invaded Pennsylvania, Gettysburg’s small community of free African Americans faced the prospect of being shipped south into slavery if captured by the rebels, and many quite sensibly left the borough and the county for safer parts of the commonwealth. The battle inflicted damage on many Gettysburg structures, although only one civilian was killed. And in the aftermath of battle, a small Pennsylvania town faced the grim task of burying thousands of dead soldiers and treating more thousands of wounded soldiers from both sides. Gallman and Baker do a fine job of conveying the difficulties of Gettysburg civilians’ experience.
We live in a time when the meaning of American Civil War history continues to be a subject of sometimes tense negotiation across U.S. culture. It is all the more appropriate, therefore, that this collection concludes with Amy J. Kinsel’s “From Turning Point to Peace Memorial: A Cultural Legacy.” Kinsel focuses on the process by which “Gettysburg entered the American imagination as an essential symbol of what the war had been about” (p. 206). As “Americans eventually connected Gettysburg with their nation’s successful postwar reconciliation” (p. 208), the difficult issues that had brought on the war received less emphasis. The result, as Kinsel sees it, is that today at the Gettysburg National Military Park,
Americans find a beautiful pastoral landscape that seemingly belies the true nature of war. There they can encounter history as a dramatic and heroic episode and experience a romantic illusion of closeness to the past. Messy questions about slavery, emancipation, and the place of blacks in America’s postwar society do not, for the most part, intrude on their idealized memories. (p. 221)
The essays in The Gettysburg Nobody Knows do indeed provide Civil War-minded readers with new ways of looking at the war’s largest and perhaps most consequential battle. The book does not claim to be a comprehensive history of the Pennsylvania Campaign and the Battle of Gettysburg, but it does offer readers a chance to learn something new about those three July days in 1863 and their significance.
Boritt, who was Director of Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute at the time when The Gettysburg Nobody Knows was published, has brought a particularly interesting perspective to American Civil War history. Born into a Jewish family in Budapest during the Second World War, Boritt is a Holocaust survivor; members of his family died at Auschwitz. Boritt himself fought in the Hungarian Revolution against Soviet rule in 1956 – and, like many Hungarians of those times, was forced to leave Hungary after the U.S.S.R.’s Red Army crushed the revolution. All of that life experience gave him a truly unique way of looking at the United States’ experience of civil war, as I found when I heard him speak at a Smithsonian Institution event in Washington, D.C., sometime in the 1990’s.
The authors of the nine essays brought together for The Gettysburg Nobody Knows constitute a veritable all-star team of Civil War scholars, including Joseph Glatthaar, Richard McMurry, Harry Pfanz, Carol Reardon, and Emory Thomas. Readers who have experienced the books written by these scholars will no doubt enjoy the opportunity to appreciate their work in the more intimate scale of an historical essay.
Glenn LaFantasie in “Joshua Chamberlain and the American Dream” considers how Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who commanded the 20th Maine Infantry in the crucial fight for Little Round Top on the battle’s second day, became a singularly revered figure in the 20th century, because of three works: John J. Pullen’s history The Twentieth Maine (1957); Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels (1974), which drew in large part on Pullen’s portrayal; and Ronald Maxwell’s film Gettysburg (1993), an adaptation of Shaara’s novel that spends most of its first half on a laudatory portrayal of Chamberlain.
In Twilight at Little Round Top, LaFantasie spends considerable time making sure that other prominent Union officers from Little Round Top – General Strong Vincent, for example – get their fair share of credit. Of the modern, heroic image of Chamberlain that currently prevails, LaFantasie writes that “it is our need for heroes…that has enabled Chamberlain to achieve the glory he longed for throughout the war and [for] most of his life” (p. 55).
Kent Gramm, in “The Chances of War: Lee, Longstreet, Sickles, and the First Minnesota Volunteers,” engages one of the most dramatic moments of the second day of the battle: when 262 soldiers of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment charged a Confederate brigade with five times the number of men, in order for the hard-pressed Union line on that portion of Cemetery Ridge to find time to bring up reinforcements. The 1st Minnesota did their job, and the Union line held, and the reinforcements were found, but the costs were high: 215 of those 262 men, including the colonel commanding the unit and almost all of his captains, were killed, wounded, or missing when the day was done – a casualty rate of 82 percent.
In his carefully documented essay, Gramm incorporates testimony from participants on all sides, discusses the psychology of soldiers on the battlefield, and even incorporates elements of chaos theory; yet what I found moving and powerful from this essay was its peroration, wherein Gramm acknowledges the sheer mystery of what makes soldiers like those of the 1st Minnesota do something that seems so impossible:
Neither historical, military, nor psychological “analysis” can resolve the mystery….We are left, finally, with that unanalyzable element present continually in history and in our own lives. We are not left with understanding. We are in the presence of mystery – mystery that has great power over great events, and over each of us. As the First Minnesota had a choice, so now a choice is ours: despair or awe. We can resign ourselves to the absurd, or, like Moses at the burning bush, we can put off the shoes from our feet, knowing that we stand on holy ground. (p. 100)
I always enjoy those works of Civil War history that take the reader beyond the battlefield, to help the reader understand the civilian experience of the Civil War period. The Gettysburg Nobody Knows delivers in that regard as well, particularly through the essay “Gettysburg’s Gettysburg: What the Battle Did to the Borough,” by J. Matthew Gallman with Susan Baker. In this essay, Gallman and Baker make clear that the borough of Gettysburg, like Adams County generally, was a microcosm for the Northern U.S. society of which it was a part.
Residents of Gettysburg and Adams County, like people across the North, rallied to the national colours after the firing on Fort Sumter, with young men signing up for Union Army service and noncombatants contributing their money and volunteering their time. Yet “Gettysburg’s general enthusiasm for the war effort, reflected in both enlisting and voluntarism, masked deep political divisions” (p. 156) of the type that existed in many Northern communities throughout the war period.
What made Gettysburg different, of course, is that it was the only Northern U.S. community that became the site of a major battle of the American Civil War. When the Confederates invaded Pennsylvania, Gettysburg’s small community of free African Americans faced the prospect of being shipped south into slavery if captured by the rebels, and many quite sensibly left the borough and the county for safer parts of the commonwealth. The battle inflicted damage on many Gettysburg structures, although only one civilian was killed. And in the aftermath of battle, a small Pennsylvania town faced the grim task of burying thousands of dead soldiers and treating more thousands of wounded soldiers from both sides. Gallman and Baker do a fine job of conveying the difficulties of Gettysburg civilians’ experience.
We live in a time when the meaning of American Civil War history continues to be a subject of sometimes tense negotiation across U.S. culture. It is all the more appropriate, therefore, that this collection concludes with Amy J. Kinsel’s “From Turning Point to Peace Memorial: A Cultural Legacy.” Kinsel focuses on the process by which “Gettysburg entered the American imagination as an essential symbol of what the war had been about” (p. 206). As “Americans eventually connected Gettysburg with their nation’s successful postwar reconciliation” (p. 208), the difficult issues that had brought on the war received less emphasis. The result, as Kinsel sees it, is that today at the Gettysburg National Military Park,
Americans find a beautiful pastoral landscape that seemingly belies the true nature of war. There they can encounter history as a dramatic and heroic episode and experience a romantic illusion of closeness to the past. Messy questions about slavery, emancipation, and the place of blacks in America’s postwar society do not, for the most part, intrude on their idealized memories. (p. 221)
The essays in The Gettysburg Nobody Knows do indeed provide Civil War-minded readers with new ways of looking at the war’s largest and perhaps most consequential battle. The book does not claim to be a comprehensive history of the Pennsylvania Campaign and the Battle of Gettysburg, but it does offer readers a chance to learn something new about those three July days in 1863 and their significance.
April 26, 2025
Thoughtful Essays On Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-13, 1863 and ended the Confederacy's second invasion of the North. It was the bloodiest battle fought in North America. (The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single day.) Although there are many outstanding narrative accounts of the battle, the literature which carefully examines aspects of the battle and their significance is less extensive. Gabor Boritt's collection "The Gettyburg Nobody Knows" (1997) consists of nine essays by outstanding scholars which elucidate the battle and its consequences. Each essay is accompanied by notes and by comments by each author suggesting further reading.
The book derives from presentations at the annual summer Civil War Institute in Gettysburg. Professor Boritt is the Director of the Institute. There is a wonderful tone of scholarship and of the desire to learn that pervades this volume. One of the authors reflects that all the participants in the seminars -- and the readers as well -- are students trying to learn rather than experts with all the answers. This attitude is one that could well be emulated in scholarship and intellectual activity of all kinds. It is a joy to have it presented in this book.
The essays cover a great variety of topics. The first essay by Joseph Glatthaar discusses the role of the common soldier in the Gettysburg campaign and points out how the Confederate Army may have been at once tired, overconfident, and undisciplined in its movement to the North. Glenn LaFantasie follows this essay with a discussion of Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top which endeavors to separate the facts from the myths that have grown around Chamberlain. To my reading, Chamberlain still emerges from the essay as a highly impressive figure.
Harry Pfanz has written three extensive narratives on the Battle of Gettysburg. In this volume, he contributes a slim but succinct essay on the Confederate General Richard Ewell. Pfanz largely exonerates Ewell from the criticism he has suffered in many quarters for failing to advance on Cemetery and Culps Hills on the first day of the battle.
Kent Gramm's essay on the First Minnesota is an outstanding meditation on the hazards and chances of war and of the role of individual responsibility and action. It also has a great deal worthwhile to say about the Generalship of Lee, Meade, Longstreet, and Sickles. This is highly reflective, thoughtful historical writing.
Emory Thomas's essay examines the role of JEB Stuart's cavalry in the battle and the impact of his absence. Unlike many studies, it focuses on the fighting on East Cavalry on the third day and his some insightful thoughts about the importance of that action and why it turned out the way it did.
Carol Reardon is a highly-regarded student of Pickett's Charge. Her essay focuses on the Union side of the line and on the difficulty of separating fact from myth in considering this legendary charge.
Three essays focus on the aftermath of the battle. Matthew Gallman and Susan Baker present an interesting essay on the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg upon the town -- focusing upon the social structure of the town and of the heroic efforts made by many to take care of the sick and wounded. Amy Kinsel's essay is also a meditation upon a history and considers how the image of the Battle of Gettysburg has changed over the years as Americans rethink the Civil War and its significance. Finally, an outstanding essay by Richard McMurry considers the military significance of the Battle of Gettysburg. McMurry presents a strong case that the Union won the Civil War in the West, in the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh and in the subsequent capitulation of Vicksburg, which occurred at the same time as the Battle of Gettysburg. Thus he tends to downplay the military importance of Gettysburg. His essay is well-argued and provocative but does not fully address the hold Gettysburg retains on the American imagination.
This is an excellent book for people who have read about the Battle of Gettysburg and want to expand their thinking. New readers may be moved to explore the Battle in detail. Altogether the book offers an excellent illustration of how to approach and address historical and cultural questions of moment.
Robin Friedman
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-13, 1863 and ended the Confederacy's second invasion of the North. It was the bloodiest battle fought in North America. (The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single day.) Although there are many outstanding narrative accounts of the battle, the literature which carefully examines aspects of the battle and their significance is less extensive. Gabor Boritt's collection "The Gettyburg Nobody Knows" (1997) consists of nine essays by outstanding scholars which elucidate the battle and its consequences. Each essay is accompanied by notes and by comments by each author suggesting further reading.
The book derives from presentations at the annual summer Civil War Institute in Gettysburg. Professor Boritt is the Director of the Institute. There is a wonderful tone of scholarship and of the desire to learn that pervades this volume. One of the authors reflects that all the participants in the seminars -- and the readers as well -- are students trying to learn rather than experts with all the answers. This attitude is one that could well be emulated in scholarship and intellectual activity of all kinds. It is a joy to have it presented in this book.
The essays cover a great variety of topics. The first essay by Joseph Glatthaar discusses the role of the common soldier in the Gettysburg campaign and points out how the Confederate Army may have been at once tired, overconfident, and undisciplined in its movement to the North. Glenn LaFantasie follows this essay with a discussion of Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top which endeavors to separate the facts from the myths that have grown around Chamberlain. To my reading, Chamberlain still emerges from the essay as a highly impressive figure.
Harry Pfanz has written three extensive narratives on the Battle of Gettysburg. In this volume, he contributes a slim but succinct essay on the Confederate General Richard Ewell. Pfanz largely exonerates Ewell from the criticism he has suffered in many quarters for failing to advance on Cemetery and Culps Hills on the first day of the battle.
Kent Gramm's essay on the First Minnesota is an outstanding meditation on the hazards and chances of war and of the role of individual responsibility and action. It also has a great deal worthwhile to say about the Generalship of Lee, Meade, Longstreet, and Sickles. This is highly reflective, thoughtful historical writing.
Emory Thomas's essay examines the role of JEB Stuart's cavalry in the battle and the impact of his absence. Unlike many studies, it focuses on the fighting on East Cavalry on the third day and his some insightful thoughts about the importance of that action and why it turned out the way it did.
Carol Reardon is a highly-regarded student of Pickett's Charge. Her essay focuses on the Union side of the line and on the difficulty of separating fact from myth in considering this legendary charge.
Three essays focus on the aftermath of the battle. Matthew Gallman and Susan Baker present an interesting essay on the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg upon the town -- focusing upon the social structure of the town and of the heroic efforts made by many to take care of the sick and wounded. Amy Kinsel's essay is also a meditation upon a history and considers how the image of the Battle of Gettysburg has changed over the years as Americans rethink the Civil War and its significance. Finally, an outstanding essay by Richard McMurry considers the military significance of the Battle of Gettysburg. McMurry presents a strong case that the Union won the Civil War in the West, in the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh and in the subsequent capitulation of Vicksburg, which occurred at the same time as the Battle of Gettysburg. Thus he tends to downplay the military importance of Gettysburg. His essay is well-argued and provocative but does not fully address the hold Gettysburg retains on the American imagination.
This is an excellent book for people who have read about the Battle of Gettysburg and want to expand their thinking. New readers may be moved to explore the Battle in detail. Altogether the book offers an excellent illustration of how to approach and address historical and cultural questions of moment.
Robin Friedman
October 28, 2020
Tough read, slogging thru revisionist history. Some of the collected writers must not have not read Lee’s report on the battle at Gettysburg. Do not rush out to add this to your library.
September 12, 2023
Earlier this year, the Richmond (Va.) Civil War Round Table hosted James Hessler, author and Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide, who spoke on the cavalry action on East Cavalry Field. In one scene, General Custer's (yeah, him) brigade, with Curly in the lead, charged Hampton's division, after which Hampton, and (I think) Stuart withdrew. Wondering how, given the difference in their stengths, how a brigade could pull this off, especially against the redoubtable Stuart, I asked Mr. Hessler that. He said it was because the Confederates were dog-tired worn out, having ridden as far as they did in the previous ten days, many literally sleeping in their saddles.
One of the articles, "Eggs, Aldie, Shepherdstown, and J.E.B. Stuart" by Emory Thomas in this collection, amplifies the above. It made we wonder how Stuart made it to Gettysburg at all. Collections like this, and there are many of them which noted Civil War historians edit and contribute to, offer readers a smorgasbord of topics. Many of them have an editor's introduction in which he briefly describes their content.
I read the articles covering the battle (and General Chamberlain) after the battle, because they're what interests me more. Seven of nine do this; the other two concern matters in Gettysburg after the battle (grim stuff) and the Peace Memorial.
One of the articles, "Eggs, Aldie, Shepherdstown, and J.E.B. Stuart" by Emory Thomas in this collection, amplifies the above. It made we wonder how Stuart made it to Gettysburg at all. Collections like this, and there are many of them which noted Civil War historians edit and contribute to, offer readers a smorgasbord of topics. Many of them have an editor's introduction in which he briefly describes their content.
I read the articles covering the battle (and General Chamberlain) after the battle, because they're what interests me more. Seven of nine do this; the other two concern matters in Gettysburg after the battle (grim stuff) and the Peace Memorial.
November 11, 2017
A series of essays about underappreciated or underdiscussed aspects of the battle. Some are better than others; the parts about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and about the 1st Minnesota are rather digressive and confusingly written, while another about the town itself contains a wealth of information. My favorites, along with the latter, were the essays about Jeb Stuart and why he was mostly absent during the battle, and about the Union soldiers defending against Pickett's Charge.
February 11, 2010
Nine short essays about the Battle of Gettysburg that examine - for the most part - topics that are more off the beaten path than your main stream, popular histories of the battle.
I found the stories very interesting.
I found the stories very interesting.
January 8, 2013
This book was a compilation of nine short stories. While very informative and a good book, it is a dry read. Unless you're a true student of Civil War history and/or Gettysburg, it would be a difficult book to finish.
January 15, 2010
Fairly dry reading, the notable exception being the essay that skewers Joshua L. Chamberlain.
Read
January 28, 2017Read this book for a college class. Good read, detailed, full of insights.
February 23, 2017
A solid collection of essays on the campaign culminating in the battle of Gettysburg. As with any collection, quality varies, but I think there is something here for any reader interested in the ACW's Eastern theater.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews