Rating: 
Summary: Great Novel
Review: when i first started reading it, i read it for school, but as i really got into it, it really interested me. past interpretations of the civil war that i had were completely wrong and this book brought everything to life. intead of just facts and statistics this novel actually probed deeper into the minds and thoughts of civil war personalities. not only is this an educational book, it is also a great book just to read for fun. The maps included helped the whole process and you get out of this book a sense of the saddness and pain that touched everyone who fought in this war. however we have barely touched the surface of this subject-gettysburg the turning point in the war.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great book.
Review: Before reading this book, I knew nothing about the Civil War, nor did I care. But once I was done with this book, I realized that these were Americans that were killing each other and that this scenario was very real. The author did a great job in portraying the people, the place, and the action.
Rating:
Summary: As good as literature gets
Review: All the nobility and tragedy of what it means to be human, in just a few hundred pages.
Rating:
Summary: Very deserving of its 1975 Pulitzer Prize.
Review: The Killer Angels is not only a accurate rendition of the Battle of Gettysburg, it is also a dramatic narrative with sympathetic, well-developed characters and engrossing action. I highly recommend it to both history buffs and someone who is just looking for a good story.
Rating:
Summary: Unsurpassed brilliance - best Civil War book ever written !
Review: Michael Shaara has captured the very essense of the most important three days in American history. From the first word until the last, the reader is gripped by the drama and humanity of the battle of Gettysburg.Historically accurate, painstakingly researched, and flawlessly executed, The Killer Angels puts you on the battlefield and leaves you breathless. This book is a must reading for anyone who truly cares about American history.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book!!!
Review: Review of The Killer Angels "An amazing Civil War Novel" This book was very realistic and believable. The author researched the the Battle of Gettysburg thoroughly. This book has helped me understand every detail of what happened at Gettysburg. I would reccomend this book to all capable of reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very confusing and detailed
Review: I thought that this was quite a bore I was made to read it for History but couldn't follow anything. Maybe if I knew more about the war i would get it but unfortunately I didn't.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous insight into people dedicated to actions and ideals
Review: Fabulous insight into the military mind, the minds of men, the minds of people dedicated to actions and ideals greater than themselves. Kurt Vonnegut is said to have revealed the secret of fiction as, "Create characters the reader cares about, then do something terrible to them." Mr. Shaara gives us a dozen characters worth caring about -- from both armies -- and then plunges them into one of the most terrible things to happen on American soil: the cataclysmic Battle of Gettysburg. The book is a model of storytelling, and beautifully written. My brother, who earned a Masters in American History just for the fun of it, warned me to start it early in the day because I would not want to put it down. Instead, I savored it for a week; thinking often during my days and nights of these men and their trials. I read a lot of history and biography, but this is the first book I have ever read on the American Civil War, a/k/a the War Between the States, unless you count the Red Badge of Courage. I was always repulsed by the massive slaughter of Americans by Americans over human slavery. I relented after a business associate suggested that the Gettysburg Battlefield would be a perfect location for one of our sales executive training sessions. He recommended the novel The Killer Angels and Gettysburg , the movie it inspired, as the first steps in my personal research. He assured me that The Killer Angels, though written in the style of a novel, was a highly accurate portrayal of the action and the command challenges at Gettysburg. Since he had taught Civil War history at West Point, I took his advice. [The first words of the book are: "This is the story of the battle of Gettysburg, told from the viewpoints of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet and some of the other men who fought there. ... I have not consciously changed any fact."] Authors historical and especially military to often find it tempting to display their research and learning by filling each paragraph with jargon and arcania. Michael Shaara stays with concretes and vivid emotions. The writing is so clear that I stopped noticing the style. I was there in the camps, under the artillery, behind the stone wall. I marched, I bled, I prayed that Lee would not order the charge. Michael Shaara takes you there, as soldiers saw the war and army life, with its comradely and outdoorsy appeal as well as its sorrow and terror. "Yet you learn to love it. Isn't that amazing? Long marches and no rest, up very early in the morning and asleep late in the rain, and there's a marvelous excitement to it, a joy to wake in the morning and feel the army all around you and see the campfires in the morning and smell the coffee..." [p. 125] Leadership in those days, as it is today, was all about character, competence, and conduct. As Shaara wrote of Gen. Armistead: "He was one of the men who would hold ground if it could be held; he would die for a word. He was a man to depend on, and there was this truth about war: it taught you the men you could depend on." Other aspects of war are not so clear, such as the reason for the conflict and the motivation of the men who volunteered to fight. Shaara does a masterful job of bringing the complex and unresolvable issues to the reader through the thoughts and arguments of the participants. The conversation on causes and conscience between a Union Colonel and his master Sargent fills the best two pages of the book and explains the title, too. [See pp. 188-9] There's no better summary of their relationship than when the proud and practical Sergeant says, "Colonel, you're a lovely man. I see at last a great difference between us, and yet I admire ye, lad. You're an idealist, praise be." It takes both kinds to make an army. The Killer Angels offers many such insights to the minds of the men who were there, their agonized choices and their loss of choice to duty and circumstance. As when Longstreet was ordered by Lee to command his men into a charge sure to end in carnage and defeat: "What was needed now was control, absolute control. Lee was right about that: a man who could not control himself had no right to command an army. They must not know my doubts, they must not. So I will send them all forward and say nothing, except what must be said. But he looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Control took a few moments. He was not sure he could do it." Shaara gives us not just heroes, but humanity: raw and real. I would add to Vonnegut's recipe one requirement to elevate a good story into a classic text: "Show us people and circumstances which illuminate our own lives." The Killer Angels also excels in that, with insights for all of us, though mainly in safer careers and seeming to compete for lower stakes. Death seldom visits us in our jobs, yet don't doubt that you are giving your life for it, if only by the hour. The end is the same for us as it was for them; glory now harder to find. As Shaara has Lee say, "And does it matter after all who wins? Was that ever really the question? Will God ask that question, in the end?" [p. 360] Forgive me, please, my trespass. The Killer Angels spawns such thoughts. Therein lies its value.
Rating:
Summary: This novel, changed my feeling on the civil war.
Review: I started off as a student who didn't care about the civil war, and all i wanted to do was read this book and get over with it. The first time i read it, i was very pesimistic, and then after realizing by the end of the 2nd day how great this book really was, i went back and re-started this novel and feel in love with the civil war and The Killer Angels. I am now really into the civil war and this book has changed my life forever.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely expanded my education...
Review: Michael Shaara is a very eloquent writer- I was very impressed with his style. I now have a new insight into the intricacies of war. He didn't glamorize it and he succeeded in making it very real to those who have never had the war experience. I look forward to reading one of his other novels and expanding my mind all that much further. I didn't give it five stars only because I had wished that he could have given more detail as to the personalities of all these historical characters. It was very enjoyable & educational though admittedly I will generally recommend it solely to my male friends. As a woman, but not a extreme feminist, I would have to say men would more likely to be drawn to this story & it's subject matter.
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