The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara [0]
The Killer Angels
“The best Civil War novel ever written … The descriptions of combat are incomparable; they convey not just the sights but the noise and smell of battle. And the characterizations are simply superb.… Shaara has managed to capture the essence of war, the divided friendships, the madness, and the heroism of fratricidal conflict.”
—STEPHEN B. OATES, author of With Malice Toward None
“[Shaara] writes with clarity and power.… His descriptions of the battle scenes are vivid and unsparing.”
—Newsday
“Akin to Hemingway … [and] Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage.”
—The Houston Post
“A compelling version of what America’s Armageddon must have been like … surefire storytelling.”
—Publishers Weekly
“You will learn more from this utterly absorbing book about Gettysburg than from any nonfictional account. Shaara fabulously, convincingly brings characters such as Robert E. Lee to life and makes the conflict all too real.”
—Forbes
“Literary wonders will never cease. Would you think it possible that after all the hundreds of books written about the battle of Gettysburg, both fiction and nonfiction, that… [this] novel about the battle could come out fresh, utterly absorbing, with the strong possibility that it may even turn out to be a classic? Well, read Michael Shaara’s … The Killer Angels and find out.”
—The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Maryland)
“Narrated as expertly as though Michael Shaara had been a participant in the battle of Gettysburg.”
—The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
“It’s at one and the same time an excellent, historical novel, a bitter anti-war tract, and a story filled with an amazing case of beautifully realized characters.”
—Daily Sun (Hudson, Massachusetts)
“An approach so fresh it is stunning.”
—St. Louis Globe-Democrat
“The Killers Angels could well be the best Civil War novel of this decade.”
—The News Leader (Richmond, Virginia)
“All in all it is a feast of reading, the best you will find for a long, long time.”
—The Chattanooga Times
“What makes Shaara’s novel an admirable effort, and one worth reading, is its sensitiveness to the time-spirit of the era. What it reveals is primarily men in context, men in action, and thought within the changing scenery of events. It is a genuinely appealing book.”
—The Charlotte Observer
“This is one of the best novels of the Civil War that I’ve read.”
—Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia)
ALSO BY MICHAEL SHAARA
The Broken Place
The Herald
For Love of the Game
The Killer Angels is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
2011 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1974 by Michael Shaara
Copyright renewed © 2002 by Jeff M. Shaara and Lila E. Shaara
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by David McKay Co., Inc., an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1974.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51373-1
www.ballantinebooks.com
Cover design: Michael Boland/Boland Design Company
Cover illustration: Gilbert Gaul, Glorious Fighting, 1885 (detail)(Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art/Gift of John Meyer)
Maps by Don Pitcher
v3.1
TO LILA (OLD GEORGE)
… IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED
“When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.”
—WOODROW WILSON
“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
—E.M. FORSTER
“With all my devotion to the Union and the