Gettysburg The Last Invasion

GETTYSBURG THE LAST INVASION          ALLEN C. GUELZO
Posted: June 19, 2013



From the acclaimed Civil War historian, and coinciding with 150th anniversary of the legendary battle: a brilliant new history--the most intimate and richly readable account we have had--that draws the reader into the muck and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier, and depicts, as never before, the combination of personalities and circumstances that produced one of the great battles of all time.

Though the Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, never before has a book dived down so closely to the individual soldier to explore the experience of the three days of intense fighting for the people involved, or looked so closely at the way politics swayed military decisions, or placed the battle in the context of nineteenth-century military practice. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett's Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny the cornerstone battle of the Civil War is given extraordinarily vivid new life.

HUBBY'S REVIEW:

This was a great book about this battle. You learn about all of the company's that took part in the fighting on both sides that you normally don't hear about. How some of them on both sides were gone at roll call. That is not talked about in other books. Cannot say how good this book is if you want to know about this battle or the war itself . This book goes into much more detail about every officer from both the North and the South than any other book I have ever read about.