I may possibly have been the final Civil War enthusiast yet to read The Killer Angels, past Michael Shaara, a historical novel I have heard repeatedly referenced by killer-angels2historians, battleground guides, reenactors and Civil War buffs of virtually every stripe. Now I can officially proclaim that I have read information technology likewise! But what took me so long?

I was actually reared on historical fiction – Michener, Clavell, Vidal – and I read voraciously in this arena, which had a profound effect upon my intellectual development with regard to both history and literature. Afterward, equally I determined to become a historian, I deliberately eschewed this genre. Why? Because quality historical fiction tends to deeply ingrain its impressions in the synapses: to this day I have to vigorously resist identifying as authentically biographical the characters of Burr and Lincoln that Gore Vidal and then brilliantly conceived in those marvelous eponymous historical novels.

The Killer Angels was actually pressed upon me by a friend who had often nagged me to read it. Finally, he mailed me a copy, which thus enforced a sense of guilt and obligation upon me. I nonetheless did not plow to it immediately, but I did take it along with me on a recent trip. My Master's Degree in History was conferred at a ceremony held in National Harbor, Maryland, and information technology seemed fitting that my next stop mail service-commencement should exist in the realm of the multiple Civil War battlefields at Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was in that vicinity, overlooking a tranquil swimming on the deck of a rented 1830s-era log motel in Spotsylvania, with a cup of coffee in the early on morning lord's day simply prior to a battlefield bout, that I began The Killer Angels. And I could not stop reading information technology.

As promised by its many fans, information technology is an outstanding read on a multifariousness of levels, non to the lowest degree in its talent for recreating the fourth dimension and circumstances, effortlessly placing the reader in that milieu to walk with the characters on those crucial days that saw what was the largest state battle in North America. A complex still engaging storyline that never grows dull, perchance its greatest strength is in its skilled characterizations that truly bring colorful animation to a long-dead cast of otherwise monochromatic figures. The grand scale of Gettysburg is resurrected, besides every bit what this battle would mean for each side in a clash that while hardly deciding the war withal placed a pronounced exclamation marker in the course of how its narrative would exist writ e'er subsequently.

Although the characters were exceedingly well drawn, I did not need to fearfulness that I would confuse fiction for biography hither, since I have previously read more a fiddling about cardinal players such as Lee, Longstreet and Chamberlain. I have visited the battleground, once with a guide in my motorcar and on pes, and again on a walking tour with the legendary Ed Bearss. I had not believed that a novel gear up on those grounds on those days would agree much value for me, merely in this I was mistaken: Shaara's deliberately understated prose that deftly wove history with literature fabricated me "feel" the events at that place every bit I never idea possible. I was indeed stirred in a way I never could have anticipated.

In the end, I exercise not regret waiting this long to read this fine novel. While I am thankful that I had a firm historical foundation in place prior to entertaining the drama, I am even so fifty-fifty more grateful then for that drama. If it turns out that I was not truly the absolute terminal person to read this volume, I would urge those who have taken my place to pick upwards a re-create: you truly will not regret it.