Review by Choice Review
This is an excellent and detailed account of the Civil War's most famous battle and campaign. Many will conclude that it eclipses Edwin B. Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign (CH, Jun'69) as the reigning standard of large books on the war's most written about indecisive event. It presents a comprehensive account of the campaign from the Confederate decision to move North through the aftermath and repercussions of the battle. The research underlying the book is generally sound. As always, Sears writes beautifully, and his work is a pleasure to read. Sears maintains that Lee's purpose in the campaign was to win a major victory on Northern soil and thus offset the disaster he anticipated at Vicksburg. One of the book's striking elements is the author's strong assessments of generals. He is at times quite favorable to Longstreet, Meade, and Hooker, quite negative on Howard and Slocum, and takes fairly balanced views of the other major participants. Many will take issue with one or more of these or other assessments in the book, but that is the nature of the still hotly debated Gettysburg campaign. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. S. E. Woodworth Texas Christian University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
This authoritative history of the Battle of Gettysburg opens with a scene pertinent to what we imagine transpiring in the White House in recent weeks: a military-strategy planning session. In this case, the time was summer 1863, and the setting was Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital; putting their heads together were President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and the Confederate secretary of war. The Confederacy badly needed a victory because the stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi, was certain to fall to Union forces sometime soon. The plan that emerged from the session was to send the Army of Northern Virginia on an offensive across the Potomac River. The Confederate offensive abruptly failed, and Gettysburg represented the turning point of the war. Sears, author of a half-dozen Civil War books and a former editor of American Heritage magazine, leaves no stone unturned in his reconstruction of the battle, from preparation on both sides to the reasons for the Confederate loss. Readers thrilled by the minute details of battlefield maneuvers will be thoroughly engaged. --Brad Hooper
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An outstanding battle study by the author of Chancellorsville, this comprehensive narrative will lend extra impact to the 140th anniversary this July of the climactic battle of the Civil War. Sears casts his net wide, beginning with Lee's meeting with Davis in May 1863, where he argued in favor of marching north, to take pressure off both Vicksburg and Confederate logistics. It ends with the battered Army of Northern Virginia re-crossing the Potomac some two months later, a near-run on both sides as Meade was finally unwilling to drive his equally battered Army of the Potomac into a desperate pursuit. In between is the balanced, clear and detailed story of how 60,000 men became casualties, and how the winning of Confederate independence on the battlefield was put forever out of reach. The author generally is spare with scapegoating, although he has little use for Union men Dan Sickles (who advanced against orders on the second day) or Oliver Howard (whose Corps broke and was routed on the first day), or Richard Ewell of the Confederacy, who decided not to take Culp's Hill on the first night, when that might have been decisive. Sears also strongly urges the view that Lee was not fully in control of his army on the march or in the battle, a view borne out in his gripping narrative of Pickett's Charge, which makes many aspects of that nightmare much clearer than they have been before. This book is not the place to start a study of the campaign, but it is absolutely indispensable for the well-versed. (June 30) Forecast: A summer display in time for the battle's 140th anniversary on July 4, 5 and 6 could draw on James McPherson's Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg (Forecasts, date TK) and Robert Clasby's illustrated Gettysburg: You Are There (Forecasts, Mar. 3), along with this book from former American Heritage editor Sears. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Civil War scholar Sears follows up Chancellorsville and other war studies with a deliberate, perceptive assessment of the battle of Gettysburg and the events leading up to it. The book's strength is the consistent and striking characterizations of the many generals and commanding officers involved in the battle. Sears cohesively takes stock of their infighting and ambitions as well as their dedication and risk taking, clearly showing how the varied personalities shaped decisions made by both armies, for better or for worse. Drawn from dispatches and diaries, colorful quotes from the officers contrast vividly with meticulous details of the battle's terrain and statistics. Sears examines several turning points during the battle's buildup and three-day duration. The resulting insights add to the excellent and dramatic narrative flow. Though similar in style and format to Noah Andre Trudeau's Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, this work is ultimately more focused on the high command and includes artwork and photographs of the battle as well as portraits of the key players. For all Civil War collections and academic libraries.-Elizabeth Morris, formerly with Otsego Dist. P.L., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An accomplished historian of the Civil War (Controversies and Commanders, 1999, etc.) offers a blow-by-blow account of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg and its effects on the course of the conflict. Dwight Eisenhower once recalled that at West Point he and his classmates were made to memorize the order of battle at Gettysburg hour by hour and quizzed on which unit faced which at any given moment in the combat. "If this was military history," he wrote, "I wanted no part of it." Had he had this as a text, Ike might have enjoyed the exercise a little more, for though Sears gives that information in lashings, he does so with a storyteller's skill and a strategist's appreciation for the changing tides of battle. He takes time getting to the first shot at Seminary Ridge, recapping the events that led to Robert E. Lee's decision to bring his troops into northern territory (with the idea, Sears writes, of drawing the Union army away from Richmond) and that led Lee to disregard James Longstreet's warning that the topography favored the Yankee enemy. Once at Gettysburg, however, Sears's account is full of grapeshot and canister, blending a sometimes near-documentary account of minute portions of the battle with broader-ranging discussion of its conduct overall. This mix yields particularly satisfying results when it is applied to set pieces such as the Union defense of Little Round Top and George Pickett's ill-fated Grand Charge, to which Sears brings sophisticated observations that well-versed students of warfare will appreciate but that may well be lost on less knowledgeable readers; among these is his account of Joshua Chamberlain's famed right-wheel maneuver on Little Round Top and his analysis of Johnson Pettigrew's arrangement of his brigades on the Confederate battle line in a compact deployment by which "colonels could keep better control of their men in the din of battle, and could reinforce the front line with their own second line rather than having to depend on some other commander for support." A fine study, detailed and challenging, that complements such popular accounts of the battle as Bruce Catton's Glory Road and Shelby Foote's The Stars in Their Courses. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
