Gettysburg: A Meditation on War and Values

Rating:
Summary: Foolishness from the ivory tower
Review: I am still amazed that the author, evidently intent on
writing a "serious" book on Gettysburg, would include his
grocery list (literally) in the text. To me, at least, it offered
only the insight that the author is incredibly full of himself.
(At least he didn't include his laundry list....)
His speculations about the effects of longbows and their
use at Gettysburg are laughable.
I just can't take this book seriously, except as a prime
example of political correctness and narcissism run amok.
A colossal waste of time, paper, and ink, this book is definitely near the top of my list of the worst books on the campaign and battle of Gettysburg.

Rating:
Summary: Kent Gramm's Reflections on Gettysburg
Review: I became interested in Kent Gramm's writings after reading his outstanding essay in the collection "The Gettysburg Nobody Knows" edited by Gabor Boritt. In that essay, Gramm discussed in a historicaly informed and reflective way the famous charge of the Second Minnesota to defend the Union center at a critical moment during the second day of the battle of Gettysburg.

I thus read eagerly this reissue of Gramm's 1994 collection of essays "Gettysburg: A Meditation on War and Values." This collection has many of the characteristics that I found admirable in Gramm's essay on the Second Minnesota. Gramm is a long-term and devoted student of the battle of Gettysburg. He writes well and simply about the events of that pivotal battle. But unlike many accounts, such as those by Coddington, Pfanz, Sears, Trudeau, and others, Gramm's book doesn't purport to be a history of the battle. Rather, consists of highly personal reflections on the battle and its significance with discussions of the events of July 1 -- 3, 1863 interwoven with Gramm's thoughts.

In eighteen short essays, Gramm discusses particular events of the battle such as the fighting at McPherson's woods, the seminary, and in the town of Gettysburg itself during the first day. He discusses the action at the Round Tops, the Wheatfield, Culp's Hill, and, of course, Pickett's charge among other aspects of the battle. He teaches the reader about the ground and the ambience of Gettysburg then and now and about the personalities that made the battle.

Gramm's reflections are many layered. He is preoccupied with theology and meaning. He writes from a non-denominational, non-fundamentalist Christian perspective that shows a great deal of influence of Eastern religious thought. I found what he had to say moving and thoughtful and tied in well to his reflections on Gettysburg, death, suffering, and war.

Gramm also writes from a topical perspective. He is critical of what he sees as the increasing materialism and shallowness of American culture. His book, first published in 1994, is also critical of the first President Bush's war in Iraq and of what he perceives as other large shortcomings in American political life of the day. Some of this material is tied in well with Gramm's discussion of the battle, but some of it seems to me unrelated, rambling, and unduly partisan.

This book, unlike Gramm's essay on the First Minnesota (which does not appear in this volume) is thus a mixture of the wise and the irritating. Although I don't agree with everything Gramm says or with Gramm's own political agenda, I found his book worthwhile as a way to approach the battle of Gettysburg. Gramm emphasizes the valor of the troops on both sides of the line and their devotion to ideals. To be valuable, the study of a great historical event must be infused with meaning and Gramm helps the reader see how to go about this -- even if the reader disagrees with some of Gramm's conclusions and some of his partisanship. While reading these essays, I was reminded of William James's essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" which explains what James saw in the American Civil War and the importance of transmitting some lessons of its study to everyday life in peacetime. Gramm does not discuss James, but he uses heavily and well the works of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.

I particularly enjoyed Gramm's discussion of Confederate General Dorsey Pender, fatally wounded during the second day at Gettysburg, who, for Gramm, epitomizes many of the values to be learned from the conflict. I also learned a great deal from Gramm's discussion of Pickett's charge and from his essays on the Union Iron Brigade during the first day of the battle. Gramm evidences a particular fondness for the Iron Brigade which, like the First Minnesota, suffered on a heroic scale during the battle of Gettysburg.

This is a book for the reader who knows something of the facts of the Battle of Gettysburg and wishes to join Gramm in the process of reflection and meditation.


Rating:
Summary: A unique attempt to explain the meaning of Gettysburg.
Review: I spent many years living within an hour of Gettysburg, and I've probably been there close to 100 times. This is the first book I've ever seen that comes close to explaining what the subjective experience of visiting the battlefield is like.

The book is essentially a series of essays tied together by the Gettysburg battlefield, past and present. The theme running through the book is the enormity of the loss of lives that occurred there. To some, this theme might appear as an overtly political statement of pacifism. However, Gramm's target is the cheap patriotism and glorification of war that avoids comprehension of the nature of war and its aftermath. While he attacks the party-like atmosphere that surrounded the First Gulf War, he speaks reverentially of the people who fought it, as well as a more general attestation to the sacrifices of men who go to war in his account of the history of the units that made up the Iron Brigade, up through World War II. The first few pages of the book are an accurate representation of the content of the remainder of the book, although the recounting of the story is a bit more basic in these pages.

This is not necessarily a book about the history of the battle, the battlefield, or the debates that still rage about the actions and personalities of the commanders of the battle. While the story of the battle is sufficiently told to orient someone unfamiliar with the battle, and while there are accounts that will likely be new to even the more hardcore enthusiasts (e.g. his parallel telling of the story of Gen. Pender and his wife, and Gen. Reynolds and his fiancee), it is not as a history that this book has its value. The reason this book deserves a place on the shelf of essential books about Gettysburg is that it offers an intensely personal and relevant reflection on what the battle was and is about. It is a story of all wars, of why men go, and what is done to them. Rarely have I seen a book that tells it better.

Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read in several years
Review: Kent Gramm mixes social commentary, theology, and history in an incredibly insightful way. I loaned my copy to a friend who also called it the best book he had read in years. Gramm uses the battle as a backdrop to explore human nature. He notices the ways we are similar to our ancestors and the ways we are different. Would we, he wonders, understand the commitment to duty and honor that lead the Black Hat Regiment to stand and face almost certain death while buying precious time for the federals to regroup and establish a line of defense. In a consumer-oriented and egocentric culture such as ours, we might feel little kinship with those who went before. Read this book. It will make you both think and feel.

Rating:
Summary: Social Critique + Gettysburg? Yep- and it WORKS!
Review: Kent Gramm's, "Gettysburg- A Meditation on War and Values", is the oddest "war" book I've ever read- and the most wonderful. Gramm's novel approach posits the Battle of Gettysburg as a lens through which to view contemporary society for the purpose of examining two basic questions: "Are we better off today than we were in the Civil War era?" and "Have we earned the sacrifice that those soldiers made?" In Gramm's opinion, we fall woefully short of positive answers to both of them.

Gramm attempts to show that we have squandered both the ideals and the dreams those men fought for through a combination of purposeful action and outright indifference. We have, he argues, fallen headlong into a morass of thoughtless materialism. The result of our tumble is an unforgivable lack of any sense of nobility in our society on either the collective or individual level. Whether or not one agrees with the author's conclusions, they are argued cogently and with tremendous passion, and are, at a minimum, quite thought-provoking.

Gramm's history is as well-done as his sociology, rendered in a semi-conversational style that is eminently readable, informative, and entertaining. His accounts of events and people from the Battle of Gettysburg are fascinating and spot-on, with the effect of making his social critique that much more moving (his brief study of Confederate general Dorsey Pender is especially effective in that sense).

"Gettysburg" is a brilliant book that not all will find to be such- if one prefers his history "straight up", Gramm's approach will likely be rather annoying. But for anyone willing to try history "with a twist", written from what is clearly a deep reservoir of feeling and experience, this book will prove to be a treasure.

At the very beginning of "Gettysburg", Gramm justifies his whole approach with a Thoreau quote: "...it is the province of the historian to find out not what was, but what is." Perhaps it is the province of the reader of history to do the same.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: There is a reason why meditations are silent. Mr. Gramm should have remained so! The work as a history is informative; however when the author waxes on societal meanings and generational comparisons he should have been waxing his car instead.

Rating:
Summary: A strange mixture
Review: This collection of essays about the Battle of Gettysburg is an unusual mixture of descriptions of selected people and incidents inter-cut with the author's personal reflections from today's (© 1994) perspective. The author presumes that the reader is familiar with the participants, geography, sequence of events, and details. I probably should not have bought the book because I don't yet know enough about the battle.

Gramm's descriptions of historical events often left me wondering and in a few instances they are intentionally incomplete. Describing Lincoln's reaction when asked what he should do about slavery, Gramm says only that "Lincoln's dry and more or less sardonic reply is well know." Gramm doesn't tell me what it was and I don't know (p. 22 in the Indiana U. Press paperback). Elsewhere Gramm reports "'If I can't whip Bobby Lee with this,' said George McClellan, waving the copy of Lee's orders-but the rest of the story is well known." (p. 72) Not to me.

Gramm's approach to the history of the battle wobbles. Sometimes he writes straight historical detail: "For the Second [Wisconsin regiment], 302 present, 26 killed in action, 155 wounded, 52 missing: 233. . . . The Seventh, with 370 originally present, defended 35 yards, losing 39 killed, 103 wounded, 52 missing during the whole battle. During the war the 7th Wisconsin enrolled 1,714 men: 1,029 originally mustered in plus 685 recruits throughout its service . . . ." (p. 161)

Sometimes he indulges in careless approximations: After stating, "Gettysburg receives on the average 3, 018,123 visitors per year, who spend $81,077,687," Gramm astounded me by saying, "I have made these figures up, but they will do." (p. 2) If Gramm wants to make this point, why would he not go to the little trouble it would take to gather the data?

Sometimes he offers chat and speculation, perhaps intending to be witty or disarming: "maybe Archibald was a pain in the neck, a self-righteous, teetotaling ass" (p. 121); "that incredible jerk Kilpatrick" (p. 26); "Quite possibly Lee blew his cork, and Stuart cried" (p. 25); and regarding Heth, "Somewhere he had requisitioned too big a hat and had stuffed a wad of newspaper inside to make things fit, and the bullet's impact was cushioned by the newsprint. The moral is that it's good to steal hats." (p. 66)

At their best, Gramm's "meditations on war and values" are trite or puzzling: "The idea that voting is nonviolent is wistful; the physical violence is merely at one or two removes." (p. 29). "The battlefield itself is like a holy book., motionless yet always moving, palpable but always new. Similarly all the world: infused, shot through, with mystery, terror and beauty, changeless but changing as we are changing" (p. 45).

But often his "meditations" are attacks. Sometimes they are aimed at fundamental and evangelical Christians whom he calls "fundagelicals" (p. 121). An example: "Fundamentalists are sinister. Most American 'evangelicals' are fundamentalists who shop at Marshall Field's." (p. 242)

More often they are attacks on American culture and values.

"Today a young black man in an urban ghetto is worse off than his father or grandfather was. If you are poor, young and black you have as little hope as a slave had. . . . America is dying in the streets." (p. 23)

"We have been expending everything, and putting nothing of a moral nature back in. . . . Out goes the children's education, out go the poor, the homeless, the Hispanics and blacks, out go the old people, out goes Nature itself; out go Vietnam vets and 300,000 Iraqis . . . In come the Japanese." (p. 31)

"But now all the glory is spent, and America is a geriatric debauchee rolling downhill in a Japanese wheelchair." (p. 107)

"The New American Dream has become a cruel reality. . . . We are beyond all appeals to honor. We are about to be overwhelmed. . . . we don't believe in what we are doing." (p. 242)

To me, Gramm's ideas are tired, his insights are banal, and his ranting is mostly confused, stream-of-consciousness, self-indulgent ruminations woefully in need of a heavy-handed or even ruthless editor. Perhaps somewhere behind the jumbled gush of words there are fresh ideas that with more discipline and rigor could have been expressed coherently to readers.

I expected much better than this from a book about the Battle of Gettysburg and subtitled "meditations on war and values."

If the book is redeemed for me to any degree, it is largely by the essay on Dorsey Pender.

Rating:
Summary: A Book With Feeling
Review: To any person who has visited the Gettysburg battlefield and experienced its spiritual quality, this book is definitely for you. This book brought back the rush of visiting the battlefield with a crushing force. The author describes the battlefield in terms of sight, sound, smell, and sometimes touch in such detail that a past visit is recalled and an additional visit is desired. Anyone who is anticipating a visit to Gettysburg would find this a useful preparatory source. The locations and geographic aspects of the battle are vividly described. The only down side of the book is that detailing some of the author's "Values" which I find a curious combination of sixties liberalism and latterday pessimism. I found the historical analysis of the battle to be accurate but challenging to many of the commonly held tenets which are printed about the Civil War and the battle. More than anything else, the author's love and reverence of the Gettysburg National Park flows out of this book like a river.