The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara | Killer Angels

The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara | Excellent Book!

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The Killer Angels

	The Killer Angels Michael Shaara Ballantine Books, 1987 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 519 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Killer Angels - Good Book

We purchased this book on the recommendation of a friend. It was worth the read and when we finished passed it on to someone else who we knew would enjoy it as much as we did. This book made us feel as if we were walking in the boots of both sides of this war...the North and the South. We felt what they felt, we saw what they saw, we smelled death as they smelled it, and it was a very gripping book to read as we could not lay it down until we finished it. Never having been Civil war buffs, this book put us there and gave a renewed desire to visit Gettysburg and know more about the reality that was a part of this great nation. A must read.

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Excellent Book!

Everyone needs to read this book! It is one of the best historical fact based novels ever written. I have bought many copies to give out to young adults interested in history and older adults that wanted to learn more about history. If you are planning to go visit Gettysburg this is a must read before you go.

Gettysburg in the first person narrative

This is a major war novel; many have seen the movie based on this novel. The use of several viewpoint characters provides differing perspectives on a complex battle, even as no single person has a sense of the totality of the struggle. This is both a strength and a weakness, but it ends up serving the author's purpose well.

There are some errors in the novel that jar one a bit. On page 100, General John Buford notes that General Simon Cutler's Iron Brigate is approaching the field of battle. First, that was not General Cutler's given name (it was Lysander Cutler). Second, General Sol Meredith was the commander of the Iron Brigade (as the soldiers of that Midwestern combat group saw themselves, the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Corps of the Army of the Potomac)--not Cutler.

The novel gives a sense of the desperation of both forces, as it was clear that this would be a major battle in the course of the war. Primary viewpoint characters include General Robert E. Lee, General James Longstreet (commander of the Army of Northern Virginia's hard hitting First Corps), Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Colonel of the 20th Maine regiment, anchoring the far left side of the Union position on Little Round Top), and General John Buford, the cavalry commander who determined to hold the position at Gettysburg on the First Day.

The book traces the battle over the three bloody days, culminating with the misnamed Pickett's Charge, with a grieving Longstreet ordering a charge that he believed would fail.

All in all, very useful as a human view of the battle. While there are errors in the volume, it serves a positive purpose of humanizing one of the most important military engagements in American history.

Well worth reading. . . .

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great read

This is a great read!! I highly recommend it! It reads like a fiction. Shaara makes you feel like you are there with his first person narrative. I have passed the book around to several friends and they all agree that this book is fabulous!

OK but drab

I didnt like the author's writing style. He could have made a brilliant adventure on every page, but gets lost in too many details rather than the overall picture of events. Still a good read, I just wasn't "blown away" like so many people said I would be.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

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