Many had served together previously in the United States army—and for a not inconsiderable period of time—which meant that you had colleagues, and in some cases good friends, whose job it was to go out and try to kill each other in the name of the geography into which they happened to have been born, putting aside their own personal feelings about the reasons for the war. The Last Full Measure - I think this book, and the two preceding it should be required reading in school. Eventually promoted to the rank of brigadier general, Ulysses Grant chose Chamberlain to command the Union troops at the surrender ceremony. The Firefly science fiction television series was developed by Joss Whedon after reading The Killer Angels.

Especially the chapter detailing Pickett’s Charge, which is told from the perspective of one of Pickett’s brigade commanders, Lew Armistead.To Michael's disappointment, The Killer Angels was rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript. A stage adaptation by Karen Tarjan was originally produced at Lifeline Theatre in Chicago in 2004, and again in the Fall of 2013. The Killer Angels re-creates the fight for America’s destiny in the Battle of Gettysburg, the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history.

Lee really jumped the shark with this one by sending in Pickett's division on day 3 -- what a useless slaughter.By the end of this book I felt I knew all these men as intimately as I know friends I’ve known for decades. I have trouble envisioning the action and the maneuvers of the troops, and I find that I get lost in the details and just don't really care about the characters. The action in both novels occurs through the experiences of the same characters used by Michael Shaara in "The Killer Angels. Written from the shifting perspective of the main players in the battle and drawn from the personal correspondence of these men as well as the historic record and Shaara's own embellishments and best guesses, this book explains the nuances of the battle and of the war more clearly than I've read before. There is Lee, suddenly very old, suffering from heart disease, struggling with the loss of Jackson, unable to control his subordinates or get them to see his vision.

He was the reason I read it, some twenty+ years ago now, this book that I am sure I would never have picked up on my own. But Pickett's charge on the third day, although it seemed to get very close to succeeding, in reality had little chance of success. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union.

And The Last Full Measure brings to life the final two years of the Civil War, chasing the escalating conflict between Robert E. Jeb Stuart did let Lee down by not showing up at Gettysburg until the third day because he was riding around the east flank of the Union army with his three best brigades. I enjoyed reading this, and came to a better understanding of the ark of the civil war and the connection of the battles and campaigns than I previously had (speaking as a History major and military history enthusiast, that's saying something. One quote from so many in the book that just brought tears to my eyes: "Yes, it was horrible, horrible indeed. He had written another novel, "For the Name of the Game", eventually released as a movie in 1999 starring Kevin Costner.