The Killer Angels

"The Killer Angels has had a tremendous influence over Civil War literature and cinema of the last several decades. Not only has this novel about the Battle of Gettysburg inspired feature films backed by studio money and starring Hollywood actors, but the book also won the adoration of acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Burns cited his experience reading the novel in 1984 as the episode that made him resolve to make his landmark 1990 PBS series The Civil War . Not surprisingly, many fictions published in the years after The Killer Angels employ its multi-narrator approach, with chapters swinging back and forth between personalities North and South. Scholarship has also been shaped by the novel, as Shaara’s focus on certain historical figures led to a renewal of scholarly interest in those persons – most importantly, Union officer Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. But even had the novel not had such an influence over other writers, filmmakers, and scholars, it would still be worth reading today. Shaara’s genius was to realize that many modern-day Americans struggle to feel a personal connection to a Civil War that they have been taught was fought to end slavery. These readers, particularly white readers, wonder whether the story of the war has any meaning for them, personally. Shaara’s solution was to collapse the story of Emancipation into the larger story of Americans fighting to rid their nation of an Old World aristocracy in which one group of people is superior to another. By portraying the Battle of Gettysburg as the end of class-based inequality in America, Shaara’s book gives all Americans reason to appreciate the outcome of the conflict."