The late Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (LJ 9/1/74), about the Battle of Gettysburg, is a classic Civil War novel. His son Jeff has written two novels that bracket it and complete a trilogy about the Civil War in the East. In his Gods and Generals (LJ 3/15/95), Shaara followed the fortunes of several men destined to fight one another in the great battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, and in this book he writes about the course of the war in Virginia from Lee's retreat from Gettysburg to his surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ulysses S. Grant has come East to assume command of all Federal forces and to confront Lee, and the war they make is marked by such horrendous battles as The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. As characters, Grant and Lee dominate this book, overshadowing such other historical figures as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Gordon. Civil War buffs will find Shaara nodding on some small details, but they generally will be delighted with this book. More general readers, however, may find it lacks the dramatic intensity of his father's riveting novel. While not ranking with the very best Civil War fiction, it does take its place along side such fine ones as William Safire's Freedom (Doubleday, 1987). [Previewd in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/98.]ÄCharles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Concluding the Civil War trilogy that began with his father Michael's Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels, Shaara (Gods and Generals) chronicles Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and his valiant efforts to defend northern Virginia from Grant's superior, better-supplied forces. Seen alternately through the eyes of Lee, Grant and Maine abolitionist Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the narrative begins with the successful Union ambush at Bristoe Station in October 1863. It then details Lee's 18-month cat-and-mouse game as he outmaneuvers Grant, despite overwhelming odds and terrible deprivation, concludes with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Impressively researched, this deeply affecting work can't be faulted for inaccuracy or lack of detail. But the occasionally coarse grain of Shaara's characterizations is a problem. Haunted by Stonewall Jackson's ghost, 56-year-old Lee frequently appears to be a semisenile neurotic. Grant, more concerned about his supply of cigars than battle losses, comes across as a dolt. This tendency toward caricature notwithstanding, Shaara has produced a stirring epigraph to his father's remarkable novel. Major ad/promo; first serial to Civil War Times Illustrated; BOMC and QPB alternates; author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Shaara capitalized on his father Michael's hugely popular Civil War novel The Killer Angels (1974) by writing a prequel (Gods and Generals, 1996). A sequel was natural since Gods was a best-seller for a few months. It resumes with Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and continues to his surrender at Appomattox. Perhaps the feature that makes the Shaaras so popular is their credible re-creation of the interior dialogue and attitudes of the Civil War's famous military figures; here, they are Lee, James Longstreet, Grant, and Joshua Chamberlain. The point is exemplified in Shaara's characterizations of the pressures in his leaders' lives: Lee expresses his frustrations about the course and length of the war within a fatalistic, thy-will-be-done religiosity, and Grant expresses his by bemoaning the incompetence of his officers. This aspect of the novel is supported by the texture of his battle scenes, rendered loudly, muddily, and bloodily. That's a captivating combination even for (especially for?) those Civil War^-roundtable types who can talk an ear off about every regiment and all their equipage used at the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Crater, Five Forks . . . With massive publicity in store, biblio-quartermasters should stockpile accordingly. --Gilbert Taylor

Concluding volume of the Shaara family's lightly fictionalized chronicle of the Civil War, one of the more unusual (and successful) recent projects in publishing. Michael Shaara (who died in 1998) wrote the Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels (1974), a novel that dealt with the pivotal three-day battle of Gettysburg, and matched a shrewd reading of character to careful research. In 1996, Shaara's son issued Gods and Generals, a fictional treatment of the war's early years. This new story traces the war's sad progress from a few days after Lee's retreat from Gettysburg until his surrender, in 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse. While The Killer Angels used the war to probe basic issues of human nature, the more recent works in the series are more focused on catching the war's day-to-day reality, which they do quite successfully. Both focus largely on the experiences and reflections of a group of officers, Union and Confederate, at the center of the fighting. This time out, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are principal characters, and Shaara is careful to hew closely to the historical record in describing their moods, thoughts, and actions. Through their eyes, and the eyes of a half a dozen other figures, we follow the bloody campaigns in the Wilderness, the siege of Petersburg, the collapse of Southern resistance, and the surrender of Lee's army, in a scene rendered with great precision and vigor. Shaara's battle episodes nicely balance an admirable grasp of strategy with an understanding of the war's horror and cost. While it's hard to see how the younger Shaara's books offer anything new as either fiction or history on the subject, their swift pace and great accuracy do make for a vivid--and sometimes moving -- review of a defining moment in American history. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.