Gods and Generals

Exceptional novel of the Civil War era covering several battles and speaks of what the individaul soldier must have felt. Very good read, very sensitive. five stars ( )

Gods and Generals is a book that follows four leaders of the Civil War, looking at their lives and careers in the years leading to and the first 2 years (approximately) of the war. While the characters in the story are pulled from history (General Robert E. Lee, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, General Winfield Scott Hancock, and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain), it is fiction in that the author delves more into the characters than history records. If you’re looking for an accurate history book with very detailed information about battles, then this isn’t the book for you. While Shaara does give ample information about troop movements and battles, he spends more time exploring the characters, their motivations for fighting, their family lives, and their relationships with the other soldiers.

I’m a history buff and particularly enjoy learning about the Civil War. So, I really enjoyed this book. As I read I had a strong urge to watch the movie Gettysburg, which was based on his father, Michael Shaara’s book The Killer Angels, to get the rest of the story. Oh and Gods and Generals was also made into a film. And as I researched a little more, I learned that there is one more book in this Civil War trilogy, The Last Full Measure, which covers what happens after Gettysburg.

http://www.romancing-the-book.com/2008/03/jens-review-gods-and-generals-by-jeff.... ( )

Gods and Generals focuses on the men who shaped the early part of the American Civil War through the different points of view from both the Union and Confederate sides. Through the eyes of Winfield Scott Hancock and Joshua Chamberlain we see the ineptitude of the Union leadership and the frustration of losing the first major battles of the War Between the States. The Confederate narrative of Robert E. Lee tells of the struggle to choose between country and homeland. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson epitomizes the fierce will of the southerners to defeat the Yankee "invasion."

This is not an easy war to understand or write about. However, through the skill and passion of Jeff Shaara, history comes alive as he provides a foundation of the tumultuous years of 1858 - 1863 when two armies "led by fallible egos and blind fantasies of men" collided. Every American would benefit from reading this fictionalized but accurate historical account of a sad and bloody time in our nation's past. ( )

Gods and Generals
This summer I read Gods and Generals, by Jeff Shaara. This book was based on the American Civil War, and centered mainly on the lives of the important generals up to and during the Civil War. I chose to read this book because it wasn’t like all the other books I have been reading in the previous years. In the previous years I have been reading books that have fake worlds and characters, but this year I decided to switch it up and read a book that has facts in it, and is about actual people that existed. After reading it I found that it was an awesome book, because even though it was teaching me about the past, it was also giving me all the elements in a book that I looked for, which are: Description, action, and suspense.
What I liked most about this book was that the author, Jeff Shaara, took these people from this time and gave them personalities, feelings, and senses. Before this I was reading about these people from a textbook, where they only described the deeds they did, and if they include a description it’s usually brief and not effective. I also liked how the author also described how the main characters, which are: Robert E. Lee, Winfield S. Hancock, Thomas J. Jackson, and Joshua L. Chamberlain, are affected by the way war was being fought had changed, and how It is continuing to change.
Before reading this book I thought that all the people on the confederate side were ruthless and bad people, but once I read this book I found that most of these people, including Robert E. Lee, only fought against the union because they didn’t want to fight their home state, and if they had they would have felt like they were betraying their own people. Reading through this I felt bad for Lee because he was put into a predicament where he had to choose between his home and his country, and he chose his home, even though he didn’t share the exact same views his countrymen shared. This put me to thinking about what I do if put in this predicament, would I fight for my country or my home?
There are a lot of things that I liked about this book, but there was one part that I didn’t particularly like. The one issue that I didn’t like was that a good portion of the book was focused more on the Southern side of the story; I would have liked it to be a bit even, like half Southern part of the story, and half Northern part. Even though I don’t like this part I can assume the reason for this was because at the beginning of the American Civil War, the war was basically one sided, where the Southern side was winning and had great strong leaders, and the Northern side was basically trying to organize themselves and try and get a strong enough leader.
I could go on and on about how well this book was written, how the author brought these people, who didn’t seem real, to life for me, and how he showed me, the reader, how difficult a changing style of war was to fight. Immediately after finishing this book I looked up the author to see if he had any other books, and I found that he not only had two more books on the Civil War, but he also had books on the American Revolutionary War, and the two World Wars. After reading this book I strongly suggest that you read this book, if you find this an interesting genre.

I liked the book due to its fast paced and "man on the ground" type of feel. Mr. Shaara writes well about battles and the history - in an overview sense - is mostly accurate mainly concentrating on Manassas, Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville.

As in most of Mr. Shaara's books this one is also "historical fiction", an oxymoron if you ever head one, and is a very interesting character study of the major players. I especially enjoyed the characters of Jackson and Chamberlin and give thanks to this book for sparking my interest in those two fascinating figures which prompted me to read more about them.

It is a very nice complement to history books and biographies I have previously read. ( )