The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (Civil War Trilogy) Mass Market Paperback – August 12, 1987

Fabulous insight into the military mind, the minds of men, the minds of people dedicated to actions and ideals greater than themselves. Kurt Vonnegut is said to have revealed the secret of fiction as, "Create characters the reader cares about, then do something terrible to them." Mr. Shaara gives us a dozen characters worth caring about -- from both armies -- and then plunges them into one of the most terrible things to happen on American soil: the cataclysmic Battle of Gettysburg. The book is a model of storytelling, and beautifully written. My brother, who earned a Masters in American History just for the fun of it, warned me to start it early in the day because I would not want to put it down. Instead, I savored it for a week; thinking often during my days and nights of these men and their trials. I read a lot of history and biography, but this is the first book I have ever read on the American Civil War, a/k/a the War Between the States, unless you count the Red Badge of Courage. I was always repulsed by the massive slaughter of Americans by Americans over human slavery. I relented after a business associate suggested that the Gettysburg Battlefield would be a perfect location for one of our sales executive training sessions. He recommended the novel The Killer Angels and Gettysburg , the movie it inspired, as the first steps in my personal research. He assured me that The Killer Angels, though written in the style of a novel, was a highly accurate portrayal of the action and the command challenges at Gettysburg. Since he had taught Civil War history at West Point, I took his advice. [The first words of the book are: "This is the story of the battle of Gettysburg, told from the viewpoints of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet and some of the other men who fought there. ... I have not consciously changed any fact."] Authors historical and especially military to often find it tempting to display their research and learning by filling each paragraph with jargon and arcania. Michael Shaara stays with concretes and vivid emotions. The writing is so clear that I stopped noticing the style. I was there in the camps, under the artillery, behind the stone wall. I marched, I bled, I prayed that Lee would not order the charge. Michael Shaara takes you there, as soldiers saw the war and army life, with its comradely and outdoorsy appeal as well as its sorrow and terror. "Yet you learn to love it. Isn't that amazing? Long marches and no rest, up very early in the morning and asleep late in the rain, and there's a marvelous excitement to it, a joy to wake in the morning and feel the army all around you and see the campfires in the morning and smell the coffee..." [p. 125] 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." Other aspects of war are not so clear, such as the reason for the conflict and the motivation of the men who volunteered to fight. Shaara does a masterful job of bringing the complex and unresolvable issues to the reader through the thoughts and arguments of the participants. The conversation on causes and conscience between a Union Colonel and his master Sargent fills the best two pages of the book and explains the title, too. [See pp. 188-9] There's no better summary of their relationship than when the proud and practical Sergeant says, "Colonel, you're a lovely man. I see at last a great difference between us, and yet I admire ye, lad. You're an idealist, praise be." It takes both kinds to make an army. The Killer Angels offers many such insights to the minds of the men who were there, their agonized choices and their loss of choice to duty and circumstance. As when Longstreet was ordered by Lee to command his men into a charge sure to end in carnage and defeat: "What was needed now was control, absolute control. Lee was right about that: a man who could not control himself had no right to command an army. They must not know my doubts, they must not. So I will send them all forward and say nothing, except what must be said. But he looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Control took a few moments. He was not sure he could do it." Shaara gives us not just heroes, but humanity: raw and real. I would add to Vonnegut's recipe one requirement to elevate a good story into a classic text: "Show us people and circumstances which illuminate our own lives." The Killer Angels also excels in that, with insights for all of us, though mainly in safer careers and seeming to compete for lower stakes. Death seldom visits us in our jobs, yet don't doubt that you are giving your life for it, if only by the hour. The end is the same for us as it was for them; glory now harder to find. As Shaara has Lee say, "And does it matter after all who wins? Was that ever really the question? Will God ask that question, in the end?" [p. 360] Forgive me, please, my trespass. The Killer Angels spawns such thoughts. Therein lies its value.

Couldn't put this book down, best I've read in a while! Interesting portrayal of some of the major characters of the battle of Gettysburg. However keep in mind this is a fiction book

So if you're wondering about why I wrote that quote as the title to my review you might not be a geek. Hell you might be asking yourself "What's the Alliance or Serenity Valley, what's that quote even mean?!?!" well I'll tell you! So if you're a geek like me you know that this novel is actually the novel that Joss Whedon read that inspired him to create the cult classic tv show Firefly and the sequel film Serenity. He created Firefly after reading this novel and imagining a world in the future where people lived on the fringes of society. If you read this novel you can see where he got his ideas for the show. For example the main character in the show is a man named Captain Malcolm Reynolds while a character in the novel is named John Reynolds. In the show the Alliance (totalitarian government) soldiers are called purple-bellies while the Union is called Blue-Bellies in the novel. The Killer Angels is a fictional account of what happened over the days leading up to and during the days of The Battle of Gettysburg which is named by some as the turning point of The American Civil War (In Firefly, The Battle Of Serenity Valley is listed by some as the turning point of the war against the Alliance and the Independents). It tells the story of the battle in graphic detail through the eyes of both sides, The Confederacy and The Union. It was written using notes and historical documents that were left after The Battle Of Gettysburg. What I love about this novel is how descriptive the author writes without insulting my intelligence. One thing a lot of authors do (looking at you George R.R. Martin) is they will be descriptive to the point of making me feel stupid. I'm going to hate on Game Of Thrones here (love the show hate the books) but George R.R. Martin will do this. He will spend 4 chapters on a dinner describing a sword to me as if I don't know what a sword looks like. He is so descriptive to the point of sheer annoyance that instead of me seeing the battle in my head or the conversation in my head I just feel like i'm in Kindergarten. Michael Shaara doesn't do this. Instead he writes as if you're in the front lines with the men. He writes as if you've grabbed a Colt or a Griswold and Gunnison (btw the Griswald was the Confederate copy of the Colt and it makes an appearance in a conversation in Firefly but it's listed as a Griswold Grenade rather than a revolver) and you're pushing those blue-bellies or grey coats back. When you read this book you hear the bombs bursting and you hear the shots ring out. You feel the cold air and you smell the smoke as if you were right there with those men on those days. Now sadly I have to give some cons to the book and it's why I deducted a star. Thankfully it's really only one thing that bugs me about the book but it's big enough that I had to deduct a star. The book's characters are a bit hard to follow. Now we know the main characters such as Lee, Hooker, Grant, etc. However smaller characters like John Reynolds for example are harder to follow. The reason I say this is because it's hard to follow which faction they are a part of. The way Michael Shaara writes is rather than going from Confederate to Union and stating as such he will just jump right in. So you'll be reading about General Lee and then he'll bring up a new character by name who will be a Union character. Well the thing is he'll just state him by name and not by rank or by faction. So for an entire chapter I may think that this character is part of the Confederacy when he's actually a part of the Union. It makes it a bit hard to follow when a character you think is part of the Confederacy is actually part of the opposing side. You can go multiple chapters with that mindset until the author will list them as talking with Grant and then you put two and two together and go "oh okay he's with the Union we switched factions in the story". This get particularly annoying as the books go on and they start naming more and more and more Sergeants and Officers that are not as well known as Hooker or Reynolds or Grant. If you're a history buff, major, or professor with extensive knowledge of the American Civil war this won't be a problem at all but for people like me who've only studied it in passing or watched a bit of Ken Burns Civil War it's a tad bit annoying. However it doesn't take too much away from the fact that this book is a fantastic read and well worth the money. The author also adds maps within chapters to show you troop placements and where certain regiments are stationed which I thought was a really nice tough and it added a lot more to the experience.

Excellent retelling of the slaughter of Gettysburg. Having previously read Gone For Soldiers and God's and Generals by Jeff Shaara and followed by the Last Full Measure it was an entertaining and informative read. It is such a pity that some of the main protagonists are concerned as traitors and that statues and memorials to them are now being removed by those that don't fully understand the motives of many of the Confederate soldiers many of whom did not own slaves. Lee was against raising levies who might have to fire on other Virginians hence his refusal to accept the over of the command of Union forces.

As an Englishman I probably approached this book from a different perspective to our American cousins. Unfortunately, we English know very little about the Civil War, and I read it in order to learn. All in all it succeeds very well, although it only really deals in detail with Getttysburg. However, I particularly liked theway it focuses on the personalities of main protagonists, rather than a blow by blow account of the battle. I found Lee, Longstreet and Chamberlain very interesting......and indeed humbling.....such warmth, in spite of sending thousands of men to their deaths.This was the first major war following the Industrial Revolution where death become mechanised. It seems the armies learned very few lessons from Gettysburg: the charge into open ground after a cessation of an artillery barrage was repeated many times in World War I, not least at the Somme.One thing puzzled me though. Why is there no mention of slavery? We English have always been brought up with the truism that the Civil War was all about its abolition. Still, a damned good read and recommended.

I have visited Gettysburg more than once, and first visited the site when the modern visitor centre and museum had not yet been built and was quiet: it was very moving. This book is a fictionalised account of the battle, mainly from the point of view of the major figures on both sides, but underpinned by a lot of excellent research. Much of history is indeed written from the winners' point of view but this account is more even-handed and emphasises how easily the prolonged engagement could have gone either way and how much chance was involved. Deservedly a classic of its kind.

A very sympathetic understanding of the pressures on very senior officers in the field. Shaara takes the reader clearly through the stages of the battle, using personalities on both sides to show the complexity of managing vast forces in a fluid situation. Maps essential and augment the text well. Excellent from many perspectives, casual reader or, like me, a student US Civil War, even though I am English!

This is a lot better to read than the movie adaptation ('Gettysburg') is to watch. If there's one problem with it, it's that the central figure of Lee remains hard to grasp to the end whereas Longstreet makes sense from the start. Perhaps that's because Longstreet was more modern in his way of war? Anyway, it's an engaging read even if you don't care about - or understand - the military tactics. It's a good companion book to Keneally's 'Confederates'. This book brings us the perspectives of the colonels on up, whereas 'Confederates' focuses on colonels on down (different battles of course).