The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War
by Michael Shaara

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• ISBN13: 9780345407276
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War

Book Review: Fabulous insight into people dedicated to actions and ideals
Summary: 5 Stars

Kurt Vonnegut is said to have revealed the secret of fiction as, "Create characters the reader cares about, then do something terrible to them." Mr. Shaara gives us a dozen characters worth caring about -- from both armies -- and then plunges them into one of the most terrible things to happen on American soil: the cataclysmic Battle of Gettysburg. The book is a model of storytelling, and beautifully written. My brother, who earned a Masters in American History just for the fun of it, warned me to start it early in the day because I would not want to put it down. Instead, I savored it for a week; thinking often during my days and nights of these men and their trials.

I read a lot of history and biography, but this is the first book I have ever read on the American Civil War, a/k/a the War Between the States, unless you count the Red Badge of Courage. I was always repulsed by the massive slaughter of Americans by Americans over human slavery. I relented after a business associate suggested that the Gettysburg Battlefield would be a perfect location for one of our sales executive training sessions. He recommended the novel The Killer Angels and Gettysburg , the movie it inspired, as the first steps in my personal research. He assured me that The Killer Angels, though written in the style of a novel, was a highly accurate portrayal of the action and the command challenges at Gettysburg. Since he had taught Civil War history at West Point, I took his advice. [The first words of the book are: "This is the story of the battle of Gettysburg, told from the viewpoints of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet and some of the other men who fought there. ... I have not consciously changed any fact."]

Authors historical and especially military to often find it tempting to display their research and learning by filling each paragraph with jargon and arcania. Michael Shaara stays with concretes and vivid emotions. The writing is so clear that I stopped noticing the style. I was there in the camps, under the artillery, behind the stone wall. I marched, I bled, I prayed that Lee would not order the charge. Michael Shaara takes you there, as soldiers saw the war and army life, with its comradely and outdoorsy appeal as well as its sorrow and terror. "Yet you learn to love it. Isn't that amazing? Long marches and no rest, up very early in the morning and asleep late in the rain, and there's a marvelous excitement to it, a joy to wake in the morning and feel the army all around you and see the campfires in the morning and smell the coffee..." [p. 125]

Leadership in those days, as it is today, was all about character, competence, and conduct. As Shaara wrote of Gen. Armistead: "He was one of the men who would hold ground if it could be held; he would die for a word. He was a man to depend on, and there was this truth about war: it taught you the men you could depend on."

Other aspects of war are not so clear, such as the reason for the conflict and the motivation of the men who volunteered to fight. Shaara does a masterful job of bringing the complex and unresolvable issues to the reader through the thoughts and arguments of the participants. The conversation on causes and conscience between a Union Colonel and his master Sargent fills the best two pages of the book and explains the title, too. [See pp. 188-9] There's no better summary of their relationship than when the proud and practical Sergeant says, "Colonel, you're a lovely man. I see at last a great difference between us, and yet I admire ye, lad. You're an idealist, praise be." It takes both kinds to make an army.

The Killer Angels offers many such insights to the minds of the men who were there, their agonized choices and their loss of choice to duty and circumstance. As when Longstreet was ordered by Lee to command his men into a charge sure to end in carnage and defeat: "What was needed now was control, absolute control. Lee was right about that: a man who could not control himself had no right to command an army. They must not know my doubts, they must not. So I will send them all forward and say nothing, except what must be said. But he looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Control took a few moments. He was not sure he could do it." Shaara gives us not just heroes, but humanity: raw and real.

I would add to Vonnegut's recipe one requirement to elevate a good story into a classic text: "Show us people and circumstances which illuminate our own lives." The Killer Angels also excels in that, with insights for all of us, though mainly in safer careers and seeming to compete for lower stakes. Death seldom visits us in our jobs, yet don't doubt that you are giving your life for it, if only by the hour. The end is the same for us as it was for them; glory now harder to find. As Shaara has Lee say, "And does it matter after all who wins? Was that ever really the question? Will God ask that question, in the end?" [p. 360]

Forgive me, please, my trespass. The Killer Angels spawns such thoughts. Therein lies its value.

Summary of The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War

Civil War Books

• Subjects > History > Americas > United States > Civil War
• Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
• Historical
• War