The Stand of the U.S. Army at Gettysburg

Discerning the forest through the trees is one of the great tasks of historical writing, one that this exhaustive but sometimes exhausting study hasn't quite mastered. Refreshingly for a Civil War enthusiast, Hall is something of a Union partisan; he views Gettysburg not as a dour attritional struggle but as a sparkling example of Northern courage and generalship, which he tries to convey through an hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute account of the fighting down to the regimental and even company level. Diligent readers will uncover much intelligent commentary on the battle's strategic aspects and how the limitations of Civil War weaponry in the hands of inadequately trained soldiers constrained infantry and artillery tactics; the many detailed topographical maps give a superb sense of the battle's geography. But Hall is a biologist, not a professional historian (though he teaches a history course at Brandeis), and his judgments, informed by ill-considered analogies to later wars, sometimes stray outside the scholarly consensus. Apparently eager to portray Union commanders in the most favorable light, he can interpret disastrous blunders as morale-boosters that reassured the Northern army of its ability to surmount crises. Worse, the bloodless, plodding text lacks both narrative sweep and impressionistic color, often getting bogged down in the details of small-unit deployments while making no use of first-hand observations that could have helped convey the feel of combat. Gettysburg obsessives will pore over the maps and wallow in the minutiae, but casual readers may find themselves lost. 168 maps, 115 charts.