From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

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 Reed Business Information, Inc.