Hallowed Ground

March 3, 2003
The country's most distinguished Civil War historian, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for Battle Cry of Freedom) and professor at Princeton, offers this compact and incisive study of the Battle of Gettysburg. In narrating "the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere," McPherson walks readers over its presently hallowed ground, with monuments numbering into the hundreds, many of which work to structure the narrative. They range from the equestrian monument to Union general John Reynolds to Amos Humiston, a New Yorker identified several months after the battle when family daguerreotypes found on his body were recognized by his widow. Indeed, while McPherson does the expected fine job of narrating the battle, in a manner suitable for the almost complete tyro in military history, he also skillfully hands out kudos and criticism each time he comes to a memorial. He praises Joshua Chamberlain and the 2oth Maine, but also the 14oth New York and its colonel, who died leading his regiment on the other Union flank in an equally desperate action. The cover is effective and moving: the quiet clean battlefield park above, the strewn bodies below. The author's knack for knocking myths on the head without jargon or insult is on display throughout: he gently points out that North Carolinians think that their General Pettigrew ought to share credit for Pickett's charge; that General Lee's possible illness is no excuse for the butchery that charge led to; that African-Americans were left out of the veterans' reunions; and that the kidnapping of African-Americans by the Confederates has been excised from most history books. This book is a very good thing in a remarkably small package.

Starred review from March 15, 2003
McPherson's moving and compelling description of the historic Gettysburg battlefield is a written version of the Princeton professor's walking tours with his students. A Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on the Civil War (Battle Cry of Freedom), he leads the reader with ease and familiarity through the physical and personal landscape of this turning point in U.S. history. The text is brief but manages to be comprehensive in its overview of the three-day battle-the bloodiest in our history-while including fascinating stories and refuting persistent legends. McPherson writes in a conversational tone as he describes the atmosphere of the site and what Gettysburg has come to mean. He offers perspective on how the surroundings would have appeared at the time-some wooded areas were previously cleared and some present-day fields used to be orchards in 1863. Specific street directions are provided, and the author adds informative background on several individual monuments and markers. This format is equally adaptable for a reader touring the grounds in person or in an armchair at home. Recommended for all libraries with a Civil War collection.-Elizabeth Morris, formerly with Otsego Dist. P.L., MI

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2003
Adult/High School-McPherson focuses on the period July 1-3, 1863, and explains why readers should know about the battle 140 years later. The book is concise, sprightly, and full of personality-both McPherson's and the participants' in the conflict. A prologue and epilogue flank the three chapters on the battle (each covering one day), relating why it happened and what followed. The author walks readers through Gettysburg from beginning to end, telling a story of simple personal decisions that had a global impact. The importance of the battle is elucidated in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. When readers have finished this book, the only way they can know Gettysburg better is by going there.-Hugh McAloon, formerly at Prince William County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2003
Without rival as the most popular Civil War destination, the Gettysburg battlefield makes a profound and lasting impression on visitors, who, consulting contemporary photographs of the carnage, can stand precisely where soldiers gave "the last full measure of devotion." McPherson says that this eerie experience, which provokes both empathy and one's imagination, brought him and his students to tears as he guided them around Gettysburg, a tour he replicates here. In structure, McPherson follows the topographical three-day course of the cataclysmic combat, handicapping "myths" that surround arcana of the battle as well as criticism, particularly vociferous among the losing Rebels, of the performance of generals such as James Longstreet. Second-guessing seems second nature to any narrative of the battle, having its echoes even in tiffs over the placement of monuments, as McPherson recounts. If it were only a pointer to the physical ground and commemorative markers, this guide would be ordinary, but McPherson so articulately injects reminders--as of a free black farmer who fled the approaching battle lest Confederates enslave him--of what the Civil War was about as to display the crystalline style that has made him one of our finest Civil War historians.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)