*Starred Review* Few battles provoke debate like Gettysburg, whose bibliography exceeds 6,000 items. One more won’t settle the what-ifs, but Guelzo’s entry identifies key controversies, trenchantly advocates its interpretations, and rests on a sensible foundation, the confusion of a Civil War battle. A noisome cacophony opaque with smoke, the Gettysburg battlefield allowed officers and soldiers only fragmentary glimpses of the action, limiting their situational awareness to their immediate surroundings. Wary, moreover, of postwar memoirists’ tendencies to justify themselves or fault others, Guelzo constructs his Gettysburg as much as possible from contemporaneous sources like orders, reports, and letters. His result reads like the battle might have been experienced, as an episodic series of terrifying minibattles directed by colonels and fought by regiments, whose clashes guided the outcome more than anything done by the respective army commanders on the scene. Rather dismissive of Union general Meade, Guelzo derogates Confederate general Lee less for his decisions at Gettysburg than for failing to strategically arrange a defensive battle and falling into the offensive one that developed. A political historian of the Civil War (Lincoln and Douglas, 2008), Guelzo demonstrates versatile historical skill in this superior treatment of Gettysburg. --Gilbert Taylor
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Praise for Allen C. Guelzo's Gettysburg
“Graphic and emotionally affecting . . . an extraordinarily detailed and realistic account.”
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The New York Times Book Review “This is a masterful battle study, masterfully told. . . . Engaging. . . . Guelzo’s narrative is enlivened by frequent use of accounts by battle participants, observers and Gettysburg civilians, and his descriptions sometimes rise almost to lyricism.”
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The Seattle Times
“[A] rich, original work. . . . Guelzo’s book enlarges the conventional battle narrative. . . . It’s his expansive, rolling storytelling that makes this book so engrossing and sets Guelzo’s
Gettysburg apart from the many others. . . . Through those pages runs a thoroughly readable description of every hour of those three hellish days, in enough detail to satisfy the keenest student of tactics and courage. Some good battle histories are crackling accounts of tactical moves and soldiers’ memories, stepping along as jauntily as a Sousa march. This one proceeds more like a stately symphony, solemn but enlivened by surprise digressions and meditations, taking its time, building to a finish that is familiar to all, yet seldom conducted so eloquently.”
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The Washington Post “This is the finest single-volume account available. . . . There is a timeless quality to
Gettysburg that makes it special.”
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The Wilson Quarterly“Among the finest campaign studies of our generation. [
Gettysburg] earns this distinction with smart and vivid writing, innovative organization, and insightful analysis that manages to synthesize the Gettysburg story in a way that will appeal to the literate novice and the seasoned Civil War history reader alike.”
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The Civil War Monitor“Detailed . . . accessible. . . . Civil War buff and newcomer alike will find plenty to keep them interested. . . . [Guelzo’s] conclusions balance conventional wisdom with unbiased clarification and analysis.”
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The Christian Science Monitor“Wonderful . . . Guelzo’s book is an extremely timely reminder that the American experiment has not been, as the Founders asserted, a ‘self-evident truth’ but in fact a highly debatable proposition that needed to be proved, not just in July 1863 at Gettysburg but on many days and in many places since.”
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The Wall Street Journal“Wonderfully readable . . . [
Gettysburg] marries scholarly rigor to a sense of narrative that rivals that of a novel.”
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The Daily Beast“A stylish, comprehensive, and entertaining narrative . . . [Guelzo’s] account is not a typical tick-tock of troop movements; the pages are soaked in rich language and vivid character studies . . . Guelzo knows the power of the telling detail.”
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MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History“In this consistently riveting book, Allen Guelzo makes us feel that we are hearing the epic story of the Civil War’s most famous battle for the first time. . . . This is, simply, the best book about Gettysburg that has yet been written. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine that there will ever be a better one.”
—Fergus M. Bordewich, author of
America’s Great Debate“What is there left to say about Gettysburg? In Allen Guelzo’s deft, scholarly hands, plenty.
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion is fresh, fascinating, and compellingly provocative. It is a marvelous book that deserves to be read and savored. And it deserves to be on the bookshelf of all Civil War buffs.”
—Jay Winik, author of
April 1865“An extraordinary work of thorough scholarship combined with a lifetime of judgment about historic events. . . . Everyone interested in the decisive moment in Freedom’s struggle should read Guelzo’s simply extraordinary book.”
—Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and coauthor of
Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War“Despite all that has been written about the battle of Gettysburg, Allen Guelzo provides new information and insights in this stirring account. . . . Readers will find much to think about in this book.”
—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Battle Cry of Freedom“Guelzo has composed a narrative that is detailed and compelling on a human level but easy to follow on an operational and tactical one . . . A triumph of source use and presentation, engaging enough for the general reader but rigorous enough for the scholar.”
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Library Journal“Guelzo’s entry identifies key controversies, trenchantly advocates its interpretations, and rests on a sensible foundation, the confusion of a Civil War battle . . . [
Gettysburg] reads like the battle might have been experienced . . . Guelzo demonstrates versatile historical skill in this superior treatment of Gettysburg.”
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Booklist, starred review
“Stirring . . . robust, memorable reading that will appeal to Civil War Buffs, professional historians and general readers alike.”
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Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Graceful . . . [Guelzo] gets up close and personal with soldiers and officers, providing a previously unseen level of intimacy with those who strategized and fought the battle . . . This exacting account of ‘the last invasion’ may well go down as the last word on the subject.”
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Publishers Weekly