Gettysburg: A Meditation on War and Values Book

"It is the most original and thought-provoking work on the battle of Gettysburg in a long time." - "Journal of American History" 'You feel yourself standing alongside the Iron Brigade as they make a determined effort to hold off the troops from North Carolina and Tennessee. We are left to ponder what motivated such courage from these common men of uncommon valor." - "Civil War " "This splendid book is a must for anyone who has visited Civil War battlefields and wondered who those people were and how we relate to them today." - "Infantry" "...this is a remarkable work, full of brightness and invention and maybe even genius. Mr. Gramm is a poet; he has taken the cathartic event of our history and given it his touch of philosophic insight...Books like this don't come along very often." - Jim Trulock "This is a most brilliant and unusual, indeed unique, book." - Alan Nolan "Gettysburg" is a book about values - the values of the Civil War generation and those we live by today. Theirs was a generation willing to die in great numbers for a principle as abstract as union. What motivated them? What have we done with the heritage that they bequeathed to us? This book asks whether America in the 1990s knows what its present character, economics, and society cost, and whether the country's present battles have as noble a purpose and as hopeful a prospect as the great cataclysm of July 1863 - the Battle of Gettysburg. Walt Whitman perhaps said it best: 'Will the America of the future - will this vast, rich Union ever realize what itself cost back there, after all?" Gramm also presents a new perspective on the importance of the first day's battle, reassesses the tactical impact of new weaponry, examines in light of battlefield statistics the famous defense of Little Round top, re-evaluates the thinking of Robert E. Lee, looks to Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln for explanations as to why the nation fought at all, and illuminates such lesser-known heroes as John F. Reynolds, John Buford, A. A. Humphreys, Joseph Kershaw, Freeman McGilvery, John Bigelow, and William Dorsey Pender.Read More