Gettysburg 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes

Although he sheds no new light on the well-known story of the Civil War's greatest battle, Wheeler (Voices of the Civil War) provides a generally reliable account of the altercation that ended the South's desperate attempt to win the war by invading Union territory. Still, Wheeler's brief narrative is no replacement for such classics as Bruce Catton's Gettysburg: The Final Fury, Harry Pfanz's more focused Gettysburg: The Second Day or Edwin Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. Serious students of the battle will find the absence of source notes frustrating--and even annoying in the case of long, unattributed direct quotes of dialogue supposedly uttered by key commanders in the field. They will likewise find the extensive illustrations less than satisfying. The more than 100 line drawings in the book are drawn from heavily censored Northern publications of the period, such as Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly and Harper's. These provide a glamorized and highly sanitized visual record of the slaughter that will leave most readers yearning for the grim and bloody truth of the compelling images captured by Mathew Brady and other battlefield photographers. As a popular summary, Wheeler's book suffices, but readers need not settle for an adequate account of Gettysburg when there are so many superlative ones to choose from. (Sept.)