Description

Franklin Library of Michael Shaara 's "The Killer Angels," a Limited edition, Illustrated with maps by Don Pitcher, winner of the 1975 PULITZER PRIZE, published in 1979. Bound in navy blue leather, the book has navy blue French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges, a satin book marker---in near FINE condition---except for 'minor' imperfection to top gilt. Michael Shaara, who lived from 1928-1988, was born into an Italian immigrant family in New Jersey. He graduated from RUTGERS in 1951 and served as a sergeant in the Korean War. "The Killer Angels" depicts the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War as the troops of both the Union and Confederacy moved into battle, June 29, July 2 and 3rd, 1863. Shaara's recounting of the battle is faultless as history; it is thoroughly researched and vividly presented. Things happened as he says they did: General Longstreet's foreboding of disaster as he reluctantly ordered Pickett's charge, and the gallant stand of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top. "All that month there is heat and wild rain. Cherries are ripening over all Pennsylvania, and the men gorge as they march. The civilians have fled and houses are dark. The armies move north through the heat and the dust." Robert E. Lee's army of seventy thousand men are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually self-equipped. The army is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though many of the men cannot read or write, they all speak English. Robert E. Lee is in his fifty-seventh year. Five feet ten inches tall, he is red-faced like all the Lees, white-bearded, dressed in an old gray coat without insignia. An honest man, a gentleman, Lee has no "vices." He does not drink, smoke or gamble or chase women. He does not own slaves nor believe in slavery, but he does believe that the Negro, "in the present stage of his development" cannot be considered the equal of the white man." He believes absolutely in God. He loves Virginia above all, the mystic dirt of home. He is the most beloved man in either army. James Longstreet is a large man, larger than Lee, full-bearded, blue-eyed, ominous, slow-talking, crude. George Pickett is forty-two, gaudy and loveable, long-haired, perfumed; last in his class at West Point, he makes up for a lack of wisdom with a lusty exuberance. J.E.B. Stuart, lieutenant General, is thirty, tall, handsome, hairy chested, the laughing banjo players, a fine soldier, who loves to read about himself in the newspaper. Jubal Early, Major General, is forty-six, a dark, cold, icy man, bitter, alone but a competent soldier. John Reynolds, Major General, is forty-two, perhaps the finest soldier in the Union Army. Like Lee, he is a former commander of West Point, a courteous man, marvelous horseman, another gentleman. Joseph Chamberlain was thirty-four years old and one year before he had been a professor at Bowdoin University. A tall man, he was somewhat picturesque in is blue cavalry trousers and a three-foot sword, and the clothes he wore he had not taken off for a week. He had a grave, boyish dignity, a naive look of the happy professor. Shaara added a good but more beyond bare fact to his chronicle; he has looked into the hearts and minds of the men who fought, and he has tried to imagine what those men thought and said The Civil War did not end until April 9, 1865 when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the U.S. The war left an estimated 698,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties, making the Civil War the deadliest military conflict in American history. 410 pages. I offer combined shipping.