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The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War

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Lee was feeling weak and mortal at Gettysburg. He wanted the war ended now. It certainly clouded his judgement. He was a man of faith and honor. In Pennsylvania he put too much faith in God finding his cause righteous and he depending too heavily on the honor of his troops to make it to that grove of trees at the top of the hill. He had a brilliant commander in Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Longstreet argued to slide around the enemy and to fight another day. If truth be known he disagreed with this whole thrusting North business. He wanted to build trenches and fight a defensive war. You don’t win glorious honorable battles fighting a defensive war and Lee was addicted to winning battles. There is a whiff of Shakespearean tragedy around Longstreet. In presenting history like this, the reader is very dependant on trusting the author to have done his research and is not cheating by switching a character's motivations or aims to fit the "story". In fact at times, I was imagining how Steven Spielberg would have filmed this. Would he have "killed off" certain characters just to make the drama more poignant? A stage adaptation by Karen Tarjan was originally produced at Lifeline Theatre in Chicago in 2004, and again in the Fall of 2013. The adaptation was subsequently produced at Anchorage Community Theatre, the Wayside Theatre in Virginia, the Heritage Theatre in Maryland, Mother Road Theatre in New Mexico, and Michigan Shakespeare Festival. The Killer Angels was the title of the 2013 album by Swedish heavy metal artists Civil War, which included the song "Gettysburg", a song about the Battle of Gettysburg.

One of my favorite historical fiction novels of ALL TIME. I read this with my 13 year-old son and 12 year-old daughter and it was amazing. My kids loved it just as much as I did. It was tight, character-driven, and dramatic. 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). Die starken Schilderungen der handelnden Personen geht auch mit dem allgemeinen Schreibstil von Michael Shaara einher – THE KILLER ANGEL S liest sich schlichtweg grandios, spannend und enorm lehrreich. Nach der Lektüre hat man das Gefühl, nicht nur viel über die Schlacht von Gettysburg gelernt, sondern diese Schlacht auch verstanden (!) zu haben, Shaara bringt das gesamte Thema dem Leser sehr instruktiv und plastisch nahe.He is a different man than he was at the start of the war. Some would say he is a brilliant tactician, but if you walk the grounds of the battle of Gettysburg which I have not had that opportunity physically, you will discover that Lee gave his generals an impossible task. The battle smells of desperation. Shaara makes the case that Lee was already suffering from the heart condition that would eventually kill him. Robert E. Lee the honorable virginian gentleman soldier who facing a choice between fighting his country or his home resigns from the army and heads to his native state only to become The greatest General and possibly the most revered soldier in U.S. history. Es dürfte auf dem Sektor „Militärgeschichte“ wenige Bücher geben, welche in den letzten Jahrzehnten eine solche Popularität wie Michael Shaaras THE KILLER ANGELS erlangt haben – und wer dieses Buch liest versteht auch, warum dies der Fall ist.

Leadership in those days, as it is today, was all about character, competence, and conduct. As Shaara wrote of Gen. Armistead: "He was one of the men who would hold ground if it could be held; he would die for a word. He was a man to depend on, and there was this truth about war: it taught you the men you could depend on." Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels may be the best historical novel I've ever read. (The only close competitor would be Herman Wouk's Winds of War duology, but that is so different in nature as not to be comparable.) My admiration of The Killer Angels is of course widely shared. It won a Pulitzer in 1975 and many other awards. To me the whole scenario in which the battle was fought seemed more like two macho guys arm wrestling in a pub to see who would take the pretty girl home. But maybe that's the whole point. The battle was senseless in some ways. The book starts with a Foreword that gives details of the armies and people involved. Four main chronological sections cover the days of Monday, June 29, 1863, through Friday, July 3, 1863, with the text alternating between the viewpoints of various Union and Confederate participants. An Afterword tells the reader what happens to several of the key characters. With the exception of the Foreword, which is written in the present tense, the entire book is written in the third person, past tense. One of the longest films ever released by a Hollywood studio, Gettysburg runs 254 minutes (4 hours, 14 minutes) on VHS and DVD. A "Director's Cut", 271-minute (4 hours, 31 minutes), with several extended or added scenes, was produced and sold as a part of a special "Collector's Edition" released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2011, to coincide with 150th commemoration of beginning of the Civil War in April 1861. It was also released in the UK by the Premium Collection as a DVD and Blu-ray combo which includes the Directors extended version and is number 21 in the collection. [ citation needed] Reception [ edit ]The Killer Angels" has been followed by two related novels from the author's son, Jeffrey Sharra. "Gods and Generals" is a prequel to the events of the Civil War, while "The Last Full Measure" begins where "The Killer Angels" leaves off. The action in both novels occurs through the experiences of the same characters used by Michael Shaara in "The Killer Angels." 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. He knew he had to hold out until reinforcements arrived. He’d done this before. According to Shaara’s son, Jeff (who can start a bank with the books he’s sold by aping his father’s distinctive techniques), The Killer Angels was initially greeted with skepticism due to its release at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Maybe, or maybe not. The world, after all, is filled with great books that never found wide audiences.

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