"Bayonet! Forward": My Civil War Reminiscences

This is a collection of some of General Chamberlain's writings produced during and also after the war. It's refreshing to read somebody talking about duty and honor who actually means it. It took me a while to reconcile our own jaded culture with his time, but the effort was worth it. The transcript of the speech he gave to the reunion banquet of the Sixteenth Maine Volunteers brings tears to my eyes every time I read it! ( )

It took me forever to find this book! Every time I went to the library (even with the ISBN #) they told me it was a pamphlet. I'd seen it on a trip to Gettysburg and knew it was a book. Anyway, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was an excellent writer and this book kept me enthralled the entire time. Sometimes his rhetoric gets a little heavy (look at the era it was written in, though.) I have a copy of his "The Passing of the Armies" but have yet to read it to compare. ( )