Review: Trudeau, Gettysburg (2002)

[truepenny]

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the third book I've read about Gettysburg (the other two being Gettysburg and Gettysburg: The Last Invasion), and in some ways the most incoherent, as Trudeau does his best to recount the battle blow by blow. (Obviously, this is an impossible dream, but the effort is impressive.) He uses primary sources from Union officers and enlisted men, Confederate officers and enlisted men, and citizens of Gettysburg, which all together provide a kind of kaleidoscopic view of July 1st through 3rd, 1863. (Yes, purely by serendipity, I was reading about the battle of Gettysburg on the 160th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.) He isn't as good as either Sears or Guelzo at providing a framework to hang the individual vignettes on---he's more interested in what's happening to the guys on the ground than he is in what the generals thought they were doing, which is a quite justifiable prioritization of material (I certainly prefer it to histories that are only interested in what the generals think), but it does mean that his recounting, form following content, is chaotic.



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