Reddit reviews The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (Civil War Trilogy)

The Civil War: A Narrative series by Shelby Foote is available for Kindle. Foote is pretty well recognized as the authority on the American Civil War.

For a historical fiction The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara focuses on The Battle of Gettysburg. His son, Jeff Shaara, has written several historical fiction novels on the Civil War as well.

There is a good Civil War novel that revolves around different viewpoints during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Called "The Killer Angels", seems like it is right up the alley of what you are looking for.

www.amazon.com/Killer-Angels-Classic-Novel-Trilogy/dp/0345348109/

Killer Angels by Michael Shaara is an amazing book. I am not much for historical fiction and my friend kept nagging me to read this and I truly enjoyed it.

>1) Why do you like this war in particular?

It's the single most defining moment in US history besides the revolution itself, imo. We still feel the repercussions of what happened to this day. The Civil War made what America is today, for better or for worse.

>2) Which side do root for?

I grew up north of the Mason Dixon line so if I had a side I was "rooting" for it'd be the Union. But the war is so much more than that.

>3) Why is seceding considered a betrayal or at least unpatriotic?

The rebels of any rebellion are often labeled as the traitors. The Founding Fathers were traitors. I wouldn't say the South was unpatriotic though. They were patriotic in their own way, for their own country. The South didn't secede because it wanted to destroy the country, they seceded because they thought the differences between North and South were irreconcilable. There's so much more on this topic I could write about.

>4) What are some interesting factoids or misconceptions about the Civil war?

Something like ~1/3 of the soldiers of the war, on both sides, were immigrants.

The war in the West was probably more influential about bringing an end to the war than most people realize. It's a shame it's not talked about nearly as much as the war in the East.

>5) What is your fav civil war movie?

Gettysburg, hands down. It's based off the book The Killer Angels. It really is a good work of historical fiction. I picked it for my "sustained silent reading" book in grade school read that one copy so much I wore the pages tissue paper thin.

The Fifties: David Halberstam
The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story - Douglas Preston
Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England - C. H. Firth
JI Packer: An Evangelical Life - Leland Riken
Core Christianity - Michael Horton


My reading list is far too long, but involves mostly history, theology/Christian Leadership, and biography. I'm a very dull person at parties.

The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War

The book was Joss Whedon's inspiration for Firefly. It isn't sci-fi though.

The Killer Angels by Shaara. It's about the Battle of Gettysburg and won a Pulitzer for best fiction in 1975.

https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Angels-Classic-Novel-Trilogy/dp/0345348109

The Killer Angels

Gates of FIre

Both are awesome, both are required reading at all the major US military schools.

James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is immediately the first book that comes to mind. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it is “the book” to read on the Civil War. It is a highly readable account of the build-up to the Civil War, causes, and the war itself. It also won a Pulitzer Prize. For more, I’d also check out Ta-Nehisi Coate’s online book club on Battle Cry of Freedom over at The Atlantic.

Other excellent works on the period I would recommend are:

• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin: an account of the Lincoln administration during the war years
  
  
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner: details Lincoln’s career and his relationship and views on slavery.
  
  
• Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine: takes a look at the southern plantation economy and its destruction in the Civil War
  
  
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust: Harvard President and historian Faust looks at how the nation collectively dealt with the death of 600,000 young men and the national trauma of the war
  
  
• Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams: an older book, but still a classic on the Union command structure and Lincoln’s difficulty in choosing an effective commander for the Union Army
  
  
• Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy: for the military side of the conflict without much historiography
  
  Also, the Civil War produced some of the greatest memoirs in American letters:
  
  
• Grant’s Memoirs: written after his presidency with the assistance of Mark Twain, who later compared them to Caesar’s Commentaries
  
  
• Sherman’s Memoirs: called by literary critic Edmund Wilson a fascinating and disturbing account of an "appetite for warfare" that "grows as it feeds on the South"
  
  
• The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis: a massive tome of a book in which Davis lays out his rational for secession (in hindsight) and upon which much of the Lost Cause mythology would later be based
  
  And, I always recommend reading poetry and fiction, so I would also encourage you to look at Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, as well as the war poetry of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, particularly Melville’s poem The Martyr, written days after Lincoln’s assassination. More contemporary fiction would be Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, or EL Doctorow’s The March.
  
  Finally, check out David Blight’s Open Yale Lectures on the Civil War. Prof. Blight is a fantastic lecturer. They are free, and the course syllabus is online, and in 26 hours you can take a full Yale course completely on your own.
  

The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels is a GREAT novel set in the civil war, with really accurate depictions of the battle's mechanics and history.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a great novel set in WWI, examining young men's reactions to the atrocities and realities of modern warfare.

Hopefully that helps you out in your quest.

Here, I'll help you so it's not so obvious you're intellectually void next time there's a discussion like this.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-E-Lee

Also read this: https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Angels-Classic-Novel-Trilogy/dp/0345348109

Here's the Ken Burns documentary, it's very informative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(miniseries) You can catch in on Netflix.

Here's another decent resource.
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history

I understand it's easy to just bleat about in ignorance. But I challenge you to educate and improve yourself. Virtue signalling for the sake of it, is a very pointless endeavor. Challenge yourself, improve yourself. Be someone whose opinions people actually care about.