It is so memorable as we see the events unfold through a series of perspectives from major actors: Lee, Chamberlain, Buford, Longstreet. To Michael's disappointment, The Killer Angels was rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript. I hadn’t really thought about how unusual it is in the history of the world for men to be fighting for the freedom of others. With high-charged, emotive prose, lush descriptions and fully-fleshed characters, he transforms the The Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest engagement of the Civil War, into a gorgeously rendered and deeply personal story populated by flawed, ordinary men caught in an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances by the machinations of Fate. Longstreet is presented as arguing against the decision by Lee to take the battle to the Union forces, who had the defensive advantage of the high terrain in the battle.

And then there is Armistead, who gets only one chapter, during Pickett’s Charge, but remains perhaps the most powerful creation, a doomed romantic, mourning his broken friendship with Union General Winfield Hancock.

Although it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975, Michael Shaara's novel "The Killer Angels" (1974) was little-noted when it first appeared. This point was brought home strongly to my wife, Lisa, and me when we visited Gettysburg this summer and were given a tour of the battlefield by an incredible guide.

Lee really jumped the shark with this one by sending in Pickett's division on day 3 -- what a useless slaughter. The heroism of rhetoric professor Joshua Chamberlain, who held the end of the line at Gettysburg, is shown in the many details, including his wise treatment of deserters, his rousing speeches to his men, his horror at filling a hole in the line with his own brother.Lee and James Longstreet, and Union Generals Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford (actually Chamberlain was a colonel at this battle, but eventually attained the rank of Major General before the end of the war). A single regiment of Union soldiers (the 20th Maine), held off a superior force of confederate charges for well over an hour until they finally ran out of ammunition. Being an Aussie, the American Civil war was just something I was taught at school, it had no real relevance. The trilogy even touched on the years before the war how some soldiers who were friends found themselves as enemies with devestating results such as the tragic friendship between Winfield Scott Hancock and Lew Armistead who avoid facing each other until the fateful battle of Gettysburg. The book violates a common perception of historical writing which says readers of war novels are more interested in the common soldiers' experiences rather than the generals who live in the lofty atmosphere of rear headquarters, moving armies around like chess pieces.