Rating: 
Summary: Meticulously researched photo study of Gettysburg
Review: An excellent and suprisingly absorbing photo record of the Gettysburg battlefield. Frassanito using exacting research and the bloodhound qualities of a detective precisely places and orients the famous Civil War photos of Gettyburg. In the biggest coup of the study he finds that some of the most renown photos were actually made around the Rose Farm and not McPherson's Wood. As the title indicates this book does seem to draw the reader back to the instant in time frozen by the camera way back in 1863-66. Coming across this book by pure chance it was with suprised pleasure that I read and studied the poinant photos.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read for anyone remotely interested in history!
Review: I feel that Mr. Frassanito's work has been the catalyst in America's renewed interest in the Civil War. Ken Burns wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the groundwork laid by William Frassanito, beginning with this book. I highly recommend any of Mr. Frassanito's works. Tom Hahner Munhall, PA
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable, treasured, often re-read classic
Review: I found this book in a Friends of the Library book sale in Hilo, Hawaii about l980, five years after it first came out. I think I paid 35 cents for it in hardcover, in perfect condition. It is the best bargain I ever found in my life. I re-read it every four years or so. I cannot imagine its owner ever parting with it, short of dying himself and having his clueless heirs simply donate his library without scrutiny. If you care about U.S. history, the Civil War, photography, the way historians think about a fresh approach to well-covered subjects, or just good writing and thinking, buy this book. It is worth whatever Amazon wants to charge you. I live now 2,000 miles from the Battlefield, and have never visited it, but if I ever get the chance, this book will go with me. It is simply, completely, brilliant. It can make you cry, if you aren't careful. It certainly makes you envy Bill Frassanito's achievement. His idea of contrasting the historical photo with an image shot from the same spot now has been copied with the Jack the Ripper crime sites as well as in his subsequent books. It was a great idea, and no one's done it better.
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Summary: Gruesome, but still a great work
Review: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this is the book you should "read" about the Civil War. Certainly the goals of the book were well accomplished. I could have done without the numerous times the author explains in detail about the bloating of the bodies and how the bacteria cause it....it was brought up so many times I thought he must be a bit morbid. Nevertheless, it's not a book to entertain but to depict what was, and it does this very well.
Rating:
Summary: Gruesome, but still a great work
Review: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this is the book you should "read" about the Civil War. Certainly the goals of the book were well accomplished. I could have done without the numerous times the author explains in detail about the bloating of the bodies and how the bacteria cause it....it was brought up so many times I thought he must be a bit morbid. Nevertheless, it's not a book to entertain but to depict what was, and it does this very well.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant analyses of Civil War photographs
Review: If you visit the Devil's Den portion of the Gettysburg battlefield, there's a sign describing how a famous photograph came to be. The photographer claimed that it was a picture of a confederate sharpshooter who had been mortally wounded during the battle. The soldier evidently made himself comfortable before he died. The sign explains that the photograph was staged, the soldier was not a sharpshooter and that the body was dragged some 40 yards to the spot. The sign credits William Frassanito with having made this discovery after careful study of Gettysburg photographs.This is the book that describes this and many other pictures of the Gettysburg battlefield, many depicting dead men or horses. Many of these photographs are famous in the sense that they are used frequently in civil books and now in documentaries. Frassanito demonstrates convincingly that several of these frequently used photographs are mislabeled, generally to make the photographs seem more interesting and therefore more saleable. Frassanito was an intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War and won the Bronze Star. I feel that only from a lot of practice analyzing photographs during the war could he have developed the skill needed to make the many clever observations in this book. Clearly, his wartime experiences left their mark in other ways as well. He frequently loses the detached air of a historian and reminds his readers of the horrors the subjects of the photographs must have experience. For example, he describes how rapid decomposition bloated the bodies immediately after the battle and how in some instances forced open the corpses' trouser buttons. "Thus the trousers on the soldier seen here were most likely open before his body was dragged to this position, the dragging action forcing them down below his hips. Here then was a young man who, only three days prior... full of life...But by July 5... was just another nameless corpse, his faced pressed against the earth, his exposed buttocks, once carefully hidden in accordance with the vanities of civilization, a sign of war's ultimate glory." This book has the potential to make you feel like an expert on the battle of Gettysburg. If you read this book, you will recognize misidentified photographs in even some of the best documentaries. Further, you will be able to find the locations most of these photos with the aid of this book, even those in less frequently visited portions of the battlefield. I would recommend all of Frassanito's books to Civil War buffs, but this one above all. The section on the Rose Woods photographs is brilliant, more so than even the passage that earned a marker at Devil's Den.
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Summary: The seminal work on Civil War photography research
Review: Many of us who are historians (credentialed or uncredentialed) have viewed Civil War photographs with suspicion. Example: "If these are Union soldiers, then why is there so little uniformity in their uniforms?" Or: "This body is described as that of a Confederate sharpshooter . . . but that's a federal issue Springfield rifle propped next to him." William Frassanito raised such issues to the level of scholarly inquiry, and through painstaking research wrote the story of the Gettysburg photographs. We now know what and who we are looking at, and on which portion of the battlefield. This book and his companion volume on the Antietam photographs are indispensable for any serious student of the Civil War in the East.
Rating:
Summary: The seminal work on Civil War photography research
Review: Many of us who are historians (credentialed or uncredentialed) have viewed Civil War photographs with suspicion. Example: "If these are Union soldiers, then why is there so little uniformity in their uniforms?" Or: "This body is described as that of a Confederate sharpshooter . . . but that's a federal issue Springfield rifle propped next to him." William Frassanito raised such issues to the level of scholarly inquiry, and through painstaking research wrote the story of the Gettysburg photographs. We now know what and who we are looking at, and on which portion of the battlefield. This book and his companion volume on the Antietam photographs are indispensable for any serious student of the Civil War in the East.
Rating:
Summary: The seminal work on Civil War photography research
Review: Many of us who are historians (credentialed or uncredentialed) have viewed Civil War photographs with suspicion. Example: "If these are Union soldiers, then why is there so little uniformity in their uniforms?" Or: "This body is described as that of a Confederate sharpshooter . . . but that's a federal issue Springfield rifle propped next to him." William Frassanito raised such issues to the level of scholarly inquiry, and through painstaking research wrote the story of the Gettysburg photographs. We now know what and who we are looking at, and on which portion of the battlefield. This book and his companion volume on the Antietam photographs are indispensable for any serious student of the Civil War in the East.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone remotely interested in history!
Review: Mr. Frassanito has performed magic. His painstaking research has clarified the battle of Gettysburg for all time. Because of his book, I have scoured the Gettysburg battlefield, book in hand, and have revisted each site he identifies. He truly deserves recognition as one of America's all time great historian - detectives.
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