The Killer Angels | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Shaara
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  514 reviews
Sales Rank: 1644
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0345348109
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345348104
ASIN: 0345348109
Publication Date: August 12, 1987
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Amazon.com Review
This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit's bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels. There are also plenty of maps, which convey a complete sense of what happened July 1-3, 1863. Reading about the past is rarely so much fun as on these pages.
Product Description
"My favorite historical novel...A superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant."
JAMES M. McPHERSON
Author of BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM
Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for fiction
In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Shattered futures, forgotten innocence, and crippled beauty were also the casualties of war. Unique, sweeping, an unforgettable, THE KILLER ANGELS is a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America's destiny.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 509 more reviews...
 kids book, barely worth reading October 9, 2008
Okay i got into the civil war when i was an adolescent -- i loved the ken burns book/documentary and glory... I read the killer angels and loved it... granted i was twelve... i guess i wasn't into characters, and didn't see when they were poorly developed... i liked the military history, but didn't know that the author's portrayal of history was indeed FICTIONAL...
Zoom to today... i study the civil war in college now... i recently read the killer angels again... but i shouldn't have... i should have left my childhood affinity for that book alone... the re-read was a disappointment for several reasons:
#1 - I get into the technicalities of military history and the importance of certain troop movements & fights, however i think some of the most important details are wrong, or omitted... I know this is fiction, but really, it seems like it's trying to be historically accurate... but it falls short of that by succumbing to the same old biases and embellishments that plague Civil War history... For instance, I believe the significance of the Iron Brigade's fights on the first day were the fiercest and more historically important to the outcome of the battle than the other two days (just look at the 70% casualty rate). In comparison, to day 1 fighting, Chamberlain & the 20th Maine's fight was a skirmish. The actions of dead Western (Midwestern) men mentioned briefly in this fictional story, were the reason many a Maine man survived to tell their tall tales. Also the significance of Reynolds actions, the politics of rank between Hancock and Meade & him so integral to the Gettysburg story, are ignored as well. There are so many really touching, tragic & dramatic stories in Gettysburg, but this book focuses on few of them.
#2 - This is a poorly written piece of commercial literature. There's no real insight into any characters. The dialogue is laughable.
I will give it two stars, only because there is still a soft spot for it in my heart, because i read it when i was young... same with movie Gettysburg... just watched that again recently... ugghhhh.... everything bad and wrong about that book was magnified in the movie... i should have left my fond memories of that movie alone too....
I recommend: The Iron Brigade (Alan T Nolan), In the Bloody Railroad Cut at Gettysburg (Lance J Herdegen), and Noah Trudeau's thorough chronological study of Gettysburg... also, Herdegen has a brand new book out called "Those damn black hats" about the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg.
 history class October 7, 2008
This book is great. The point of view is that of the other person. I had to buy this book for AP US History and I don't regret it!
Still the best, after all August 8, 2008
Michael Shaara isn't a well-known figure in American literature. He spent most of his writing career producing short stories, mostly science fiction. He only wrote three novels while he was alive, the current book, a boxing novel titled "The Broken Place" and a futuristic doomsday thriller titled "The Herald". The boxing novel was critically successful but didn't sell well, and "The Herald" was an abject failure. He had one novella, "For the Love of the Game" which was published after his death, and made into a sappy Kevin Costner movie. However, among historical novelists, especially those writing about the Civil War, Shaara has a stellar reputation, right up there with Stephen Crane. "The Red Badge of Courage gets assigned to students to read sometimes, I'm sure, but "The Killer Angels" gets assigned also. The question is, why does the book have such a stellar reputation? The answer is because it's a very good book, was ground-breaking when it was written, and is relevant even now.
"The Killer Angels" re-examines the Battle of Gettysburg. The author doesn't recount the course of the whole battle, instead focusing on a few of the main participants in the fighting, and what they saw and did. On the Confederate side, he spends most of his time discussing Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate army, and his chief subordinate, James "Pete" Longstreet. On the Union side, the high command of the Union army is almost absent from the plot. George Meade, the commander of the Union army, has only a few lines in the story and does really nothing. Winfield Scott Hancock, Meade's chief subordinate, is a minor character too. Instead, the action focuses on more junior officers: a cavalry general named John Buford, primarily, and a college-professor-turned-army -colonel named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Buford--without definite orders to do so--started the fighting by opposing the advance of Confederate troops into Gettysburg. Chamberlain helped defend Little Round Top, the hill that anchored the southern end of the Union line, on the second day of the fighting. These two events, Buford starting the fight and Chamberlain saving the right flank, are the focus of the first two-thirds of the book. They are followed by Pickett's Charge, which is the climax of the book.
"The Killer Angels" has had critics over the years, those who don't like the writing style and those who don't like the liberties that Shaara took with the characters. He *did* make a few outright errors: Buford's men, for instance, weren't armed with repeating rifles. Shaara did something else, though, something significant. He changed the historical narrative, at least in emphasis, considerably. Prior to the publication of "The Killer Angels" no one paid much attention to John Buford's role in the battle. It was usually noted that he started the battle, but Buford got little credit for what followed. Anyone who knows anything about the course of the Battle of Gettysburg knows that the terrain heavily favored the Union defense against the Confederate attacks, even after the Confederates drove the Union from their original defensive positions. Here, finally, Buford got the recognition he deserved, and historians since are obliged at least to explain why they don't think he deserves credit, though most instead think he deserves it.
Also, the role of the spy, Harrison, was only briefly touched upon prior to this book. Almost nothing is known about Harrison, with even his first name being uncertain. What research has been done, what knowledge there is, can be traced back to people hungry for more information because of Shaara's book. There have actually been articles written discussing Harrison's identity (with photos of people who *might* be him). He's now entered the pantheon of minor characters of the Civil War, along with George St. Leger Grenfell, Abner Doubleday, the Comte de Polignac, and Hiram Berdan. Harrison can thank Shaara for this.
Third, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a celebrity in late 19th-Century Maine. He was governor for multiple terms (the Democrats conceded that he was too popular to oppose, and endorsed him). He was an upper-level educational reformer, attempting to turn his school (Bowdoin College) from a school for preachers into what became a modern, liberal arts campus. But Chamberlain fell into obscurity in the early 20th century, and though there was actually a book written about the 20th Maine (Chamberlain's regiment at Gettysburg) in the 60s, almost no one, even Civil War buffs, had ever heard of him. For whatever it's worth, "The Killer Angels" made Chamberlain famous, in ways he probably never anticipated.
This is, in spite of its flaws, a truly great novel. It influenced the writing of other historical fiction considerably. I'm sure someone could discover a separate, earlier instance of the multiple-points-of-view narrative style on a battlefield, but I'm unaware of any, and regardless of that, "The Killer Angels" popularized it, so that almost no one tries the old single narrator style any more. Shaara's son Jeff and Philip Crocker ("To Make Men Free") use the same style and shamelessly copy Jeff's dad. Crocker dedicated his first book to Shaara, and acknowledges his debt at the front of the book. "The Killer Angels", however, is still the best.
Old reliable... July 31, 2008
If you want to put a face to the American Civil War start here. Sits on my nightstand and have read it over a dozen times to date.
 Cheesy re-enactment July 10, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
Once in a while I get caught reading a book that I really do not enjoy, but the redeeming quality is their educational value. Like flossing your teeth, while not enjoyable, these books are at least good for you. Unfortunately, The Killer Angels, a story about the civil war battle of Gettysburg, was neither entertaining nor good for me. The writing is cheesy and was meant to be turned into a movie. Here is an example:
" The rain had stopped, the mist was blowing off. He thought: good." Who summarizes the characters' thoughts with one word? Show us - don't tell us.
As far as educational value, the reader does not really get to understand the main characters. The made up dialogue is embarrassingly unreal. There is little analysis of the battle strategy. There is also little reflection on the battle's significance with regards to the whole war. The three day movement of troops is tedious to follow. Skip this one.
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