Rating: 
Summary: Separating Fact From Fiction
Review: My first thought was "Oh no! Another book about the Battle of Gettysburg." As a resident of the bustling tourist town and frequent battlefield "stomper" I decided to give it a go.
From Thomas Desjardin's introduction, to the very end, he dispells many of the myths about the Battle of Gettysburg, many myths that are still told today. Desjardin reveals how history and memory often conflict and how many of the battlefield legends came to be. A refreshing look at a much written about topic!
Rating:
Summary: Myths shattered like glass
Review: "These Honored Dead" subtitled "How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory" by Thomas A. Desjardin. His other book is "Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine" about the 20th Maine's stand on Little Round Top, knows his battle and writes a very readable book. The narration is clear, the points well made and supported by facts though at times the same point is made in different parts of the book.What is your favorite Gettysburg story? Who killed Reynolds? Lee's orders to Longstreet for an attack at dawn on July 2nd? Chamberlain's order to fix bayonets and charge? Want to know how the 72nd Penn managed to get their monument where the men would not go on July 3rd? Mr. Desjardin, tells us without upsetting anyone and entertaining everyone. In between, you will learn more about the history of the history of the battle than you thought existed. From how Gettysburg was viewed at the time to why we really know so little about the most documented battle in our history. This is a good serious history that is entertaining and fun to read. If you buy one book on Gettysburg, this is an excellent choice.
Rating:
Summary: Myths shattered like glass
Review: "These Honored Dead" subtitled "How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory" by Thomas A. Desjardin. His other book is "Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine" about the 20th Maine's stand on Little Round Top, knows his battle and writes a very readable book. The narration is clear, the points well made and supported by facts though at times the same point is made in different parts of the book. What is your favorite Gettysburg story? Who killed Reynolds? Lee's orders to Longstreet for an attack at dawn on July 2nd? Chamberlain's order to fix bayonets and charge? Want to know how the 72nd Penn managed to get their monument where the men would not go on July 3rd? Mr. Desjardin, tells us without upsetting anyone and entertaining everyone. In between, you will learn more about the history of the history of the battle than you thought existed. From how Gettysburg was viewed at the time to why we really know so little about the most documented battle in our history. This is a good serious history that is entertaining and fun to read. If you buy one book on Gettysburg, this is an excellent choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Sloppy research
Review: ...I decided to invest in Desjardin's book to add to my modest Civil War collection. At just over 200 pages it is extremely thin for the $26 list price. More distressing, the author makes it thinner still by repeating the same passages over and over. No less then four times does the author recount (in detail) how Michael Sharra's "The Killer Angels" was written as a quasi Shakespearean history, that Sharra's book was rejected by countless publishers, that it did not sell well in post-Vietnam America, that the book won the Pulitzer Prize and eventually sold millions of copies before it was made into the movie Gettysburg. At least three times does Desjardin inform the reader that Ted Turner mistated the number of Gettysburg dead on national cable televesion after the showing of the movie he bankrolled. In consecutive chapters early in the book the author relates the same long quotation, attributed to Charles Wainwright, as if the reader had never heard it the first time. He wastes enourmous time talking about the claims of Daniel Sickles and Jubal Early as forming the basis of accepted myth about the battle when both men's assertions have long since been rebutted and have no popular credibility whatsoever (as long ago as 1965, I remember NPS employees manning the electronic battlefield showing the Sickles' salaint and stating that the General threatened the entire Union posistion by advancing his Corps into the Peach Orchard against orders). In any event, these are old stories that are, at least, twice told. In telling the Chamberlain myth, the author stills gives his fellow Maine native (and the subject of his prior book) a big break by saying that the myth sprang up without Chamberlain's sanction. What he omitted was the Colonel's venoumous, vindictive and very sucessful campaign to prevent the Confederate commander, Oates, from placing a memorial to his men anywhere close to Little Round Top, believing it to be his exclusive province. These are some examples of hit and miss scholarship and poor writing. The editing is a mess, as apparent in the footnotes and the bibliography where the wrong authors are credited with the wrong materials. Lastly, Desjardin falls into his own trap when he says the Bible is a contradictory text because it advises to take "an eye for an eye" while also commanding to "turn the other cheek". First of all it is intellectual dishonesty to compare the law of the Old Testament to the Gospels of the New Testament. Second, the "eye for an eye" language is not the Bible, it is the Code of Hamurabi. Whoops, Mr. Desjardin.
Rating: 
Summary: Debunking the Myths
Review: Desjardin, who is in a position to know by virtue of his background, has done a good job laying to rest many of the myths about Gettysburg. As other reviewers have noted, this is a history of history. Well written, and makes compelling arguments.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe it's time to "print the legend"
Review: History is fiction with the truth left out, which the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying and Quotation (1997) attributes to an "American proverb" and Desjardin sets out to prove in this book with a vengeance worthy of the Civil War. It's a fact long recognized by professional historians. E. H. Carr pointed out that history is generally based on contemporary attitudes; perhaps the classic example is the German historian Oswald Spengler who wrote "Decline and Fall of the West" after his country had been shattered by World War I. Dejardins stumbles across this idea in his introduction, but he fails to develop it in depth. His book would have been much stronger had he explored why Gettysburg has become such an icon in the American consciousness. How important is Gettysburg? Chambers's Encylopedia, published in 1880 by J. B. Lippincott & Co. in Philadelphia, gives it one sentence: "General Lee now took the offensive, and invaded Pennsylvania, advancing as far as Harrisburg; but being met by General Meade, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, he attacked him at Gettysburg, was defeated with severe loss, and compelled to retreat across the Potomac." Civil War buffs will love or hate this book, because Desjardins demolishes myth after myth that is the cherished "truth" of millions. But he doesn't examine why people create such myths, which may be enobling or suicidal. For example, after World War I, the German myth was that defeat was due to "a stab in the back." This fiction was offered by auithorities up to and including the ex-Kaiser, and used by Adolf Hitler to gain power. Hitler promised that if another major war occurred, the Jews would not be allowed to survive to inflict another "stab in the back." This is the price of harmful myths. The Gettysburg and related Civil War myths are based on a more lasting truth of President Abraham Lincoln's few words "that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." As this message was absorbed into the national consciousness, most Americans wanted to be associated with his ideal of democracy. Lincoln gave his speech at Gettysburg, the site of a battle. Obviously, battles such as Bull Run and Cold Harbour were not suitable sites; had he spoken at Vicksburg, which surrendered the same day General Lee began his retreat from Gettysburg, we might now think of Vicksburg with myths similar to those now assumed for Gettysburg. Suppose Lee had won at Gettysburg; the Confederacy would still have had a powerful Union Army to face, as was the case after Bull Run; plus, the Confederacy being split in half along the Mississippi, plus being outnumbered by almost four to one by free Americans. There's much more to the "Gettysburg" myth than the physical location of various soldiers on the battlefield. This is the element that Civil War buffs will find fascinating, and perhaps open to renewed debate; and, it is the solid strength of this book. But, his approach is typified by his assessment of Theodore Gerrish's 1882 book "Army Life: A Private's Reminiscences of the Civil War." Desjardin gleefully points out Gerrish was in hospital, 150 miles from Gettysburg, during the battle. Gerrish based his account on talking to soldiers who took part in the battle. As for Desjardin, he wasn't at the battle either. If that's his basis for criticism, then Desjardin has written an interesting but fundamentally useless book -- just as my questioning him is useless, because I wasn't at the battle either. Having interviewed numerous combat veterans, I know how experiences and memories vary. All are true; combat doesn't transform people into liars. But, there are so many different experiences in battle that it takes a skilled reporter, or historian, to select relevant examples to illustrate a grand truth. It's a fascinating book for Civil War buffs; it offers reams of material to question and reconsider their favorite memories. To conclude, think of another proverb, "A person with one watch will always know the time; a person with two watches is never sure." Well, both Gerrish and Desjardins have the luxury of many, many watches. Maybe it's time to recognize, as expressed in the 1962 classic John Ford Western film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" that when truth and the legend conflict, it's time "to print the legend."
Rating:
Summary: No ideological ax
Review: It was refreshing to read a Civil War book by an author with no ideological ax to grind. Desjardins raises some of the fundamental historical and historiographical questions in trying to determine: " How do we know what we know?"
Obviously, using Gettysburg as the centerpiece for discussion, but branching into " Lost Cause" critiques, Desjardins has produced an entertaining, often humorous, an ultimately valuable assessment of the many myths that surround Civil War discussion.
Perhaps the most striking and revealing commentary deals with how the tradition of Gettysburg worship and celebration evolved, and how the controversial selection and placing of monuments transpired.
Although some of the probing covers previously analyzed terrain, the author brings a new angle, and thankfully, non-ideological viewpoint to the topics. An enjoyable, and informative read from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: No ideological ax
Review: It was refreshing to read a Civil War book by an author with no ideological ax to grind. Desjardins raises some of the fundamental historical and historiographical questions in trying to determine: " How do we know what we know?"
Obviously, using Gettysburg as the centerpiece for discussion, but branching into " Lost Cause" critiques, Desjardins has produced an entertaining, often humorous, an ultimately valuable assessment of the many myths that surround Civil War discussion.
Perhaps the most striking and revealing commentary deals with how the tradition of Gettysburg worship and celebration evolved, and how the controversial selection and placing of monuments transpired.
Although some of the probing covers previously analyzed terrain, the author brings a new angle, and thankfully, non-ideological viewpoint to the topics. An enjoyable, and informative read from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: Adequate but hardly inspired.
Review: Listened to the audio version. Have to admit that my interest in this was sparked by "The Killer Angels"--wanting to know how much was fact or fiction. And I must also agree with the reviewer who thought this book desperately needed an editor. You might compare this book to a Senior Thesis...long on words and shorter than you'd like on fact and substance. But then, I came to this book wanting the arguments, wanting the sources and an evaluation of them. Not a simple, terse statement that a source was unreliable followed by an entire dismissal of anything to do with the tainted source. (Disregarding some sources would be ignoring as much truth as fiction.) I was especially interested in the issues and history surrounding some of the accounts of Col. Chamberlain and the defence of Little Round Top. But I wanted to know what the likely truth was, not just what the author thought was suspect. And I had a hard time believing that many of the details the author wanted to discuss (like the kind of hat someone might have worn or whether there was a Buster Kilrain) were important enough to put in a book. And most readers aren't that worried about the exact spot where someone might have died. If this book was directed to a general audience, it often failed to raise issues sufficiently meaty to merit any hype. If it was directed to an audience of specialists or buffs, they would be disappointed by the lack of detail and documentation. Desjardins seems to take his audience for fools, typically portraying the worst examples of ignorance, vapid credulity, and mercenary exploits connected with Gettysburg. No thinking person assumes everything happened just as it's portrayed in a movie. I can make up my mind about various myths just fine. I just wanted information to work from and I was quite content when I got it. Just my perspective. There was definitely some worthwhile material. I think the author was reflecting more of his background in the park than is useful for a wide audience...most of us don't care too much when or how certain monuments were put in place, though some of the machinations behind them were interesting. And I think he erred unhappily on the side of talking around some of the real debates so as not to become embroiled in them. But it isn't really a waste of time. What I want to know is what the battle means to the author. Was it significant or not, and in what way? Just curious!
Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Review: The author raises some very good questions and points. His focus does drift away from Gburg from time to time and covers more of the myths of the overall war.
The book is actually somewhat heart breaking for us students of the ACW because you walk away realizing that many of the accounts of the war you may have read are not necessarily entirely factual. Again, the point of the book is to explore the myths and in doing so the author asks many questions. Unfortunately there are not many answers, although many of the key points are put to rest (i.e. Gburg for shoes, "Historicus", etc.)
There was something missing from the book that doesn't allow me to give it a better rating, and I'm not quite sure what it is. It is a little scatter brained and redundant at certain points. Another pass from an editor would have helped. There is also a somewhat half-assed attempted to psycho analyze some of the motivation behind the embellishments/straight out lying, etc. that was a bit elementary, and quite frankly presumptuous. But most of all, I think the book needs to be re-organized. There should have been a "top ten" of sorts, myth #1 Shoes, myth #2 Ewell controversy, myth #3 Longstreet controversy, myth #4 Sicles controversy, etc. I have the feeling that the book was on the short side, and things were added and restated to beef it up. The writing almost would have worked better as a series of articles in a ACW or history mag.
That being said, it is very insightful and for that it gets my 3/maybe 3.5 star rating. Not for the novice, I think you are better reading a treatment of the battle, at least to help you understand why men would lie/exaggerate their reports. The biggest surprise of course is the heroic stand of the 20th Maine which gets toned down to realistic proportions and brings Chamberlin back to earth.
In short, good reading overall, but could use the touch of a better editor, and less preaching.
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