Grant who is appointed By President Abraham Lincoln to take command of all Union forces and bring victory which as history shows happened on April 9, 1865. Meanwhile, on the Union side, Buford is in charge of a cavalry division, and disappears after the first day. Most Southern Americans, as do most Americans today, had an expectation that they would be rich someday, the eternal optimists.

This means you get a great sense of the Confederate strategy, while the Union strategy is reduced to slandering General George Meade (who, despite Shaara’s odd intransigence, was more than capable). It is the third summer of the war, June 1863, and Robert Lee's Confederate Army slips across the Potomac to draw out the Union Army. The Killer Angels is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America's destiny.

The section on July 2nd 1863 contains a nice scene where union troops encounter a black man for the first time. Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union. Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. Shaara also takes us into the minds of Union men like General John Buford who arrived at Gettysburg and realized the importance of deploying troops on the high ground against a superior Confederate force. It has also appeared in this relatively new Modern Library edition to replace the old dog-eared paperback.

He’d been scapegoated by other Confederate officers after the war for the defeat at Gettysburg, but Shaara’s version of events based on letters and diaries of those involved makes a convincing argument that it was Lee whose stubborn refusal to disengage and pick a better spot for a fight was the main culprit for the Confederate failure.Imagine my surprise when my kids are discussing the virtues of Team Chamberlain (smart, honorable, thoughtful, a natural leader) VS Team Longstreet (Brilliant, ahead of his time, brooding, quiet). I especially liked how he was able to use personal thoughts and feelings of the characters of the war.

Lastly: 'Tree of Smoke', Denis Johnson's modern masterpiece set amid the chaos of Southeast Asia before and during the Vietnam war. Another moment of the novel that I found simply breath-stealing was the description of the battle of Little Round Top. The Killer Angels” is a book for people interested in historical fiction, and especially the Civil War. Reynolds is killed and the Union troops are pushed back, but at nightfall they entrench on high ground while the Confederates celebrate what appears to them to be another in a long line of victories for General Lee.There were so many moments when I wanted to stop and cry for the loss of life, and especially at the end when the one man who was capable of healing the country and bringing us all back together as one nation, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated.

He offers a portrayal of General Lewis Armistead, one the the three Confederate General's serving in General Pickett's division. Reflecting on an extraordinary experience with his family visiting the battlefield at Gettysburg, Michael became obsessed with telling the story of that momentous event through the eyes of the main characters themselves, something that had never been done.One of Hancock’s officers, Union Captain Henry Bingham, “attended to the fallen Armistead on Cemetery Ridge.