After more than a quarter of a century and three million copies in print, Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War classic, The Killer Angels, remains as vivid and as powerful as the day it was originally published.

July 1863.  The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia is invading the North.  General Robert E. Lee has made a daring move with seventy thousand men in an effort to mortally wound the Union Army of the Potomac.  His right-hand man is General James Longstreet, who argues against this plan.  Opposing them is Major General George Meade who, just two days before, took command of the Union Army.

As it turns out, the Battle of Gettysburg consumed four of the most courageous days in the nation’s history.  Far more than rifles and bullets were carried in that battle.  Soldiers young and old carried memories of home as well as prayers for a brighter future.  And in those few days, more than men fell; gone was a young nation’s innocence about what war was about and what it meant.

About the Author: Michael Shaara

Michael Shaara was born in 1928, the son of Italian immigrants.  He graduated from Rutgers University in 1951 and then served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne of the U. S. Army.  After his return from the Korean War, Shaara began writing science fiction stories and then taught literature at Florida State University.

In the mid 1960′s, Shaara reflected on a family visit to Gettysburg and decided to tell the story of that battle as witnessed by its main combatants.  The Killer Angels was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975.

In 1988, Shaara suffered a fatal heart attack, but his legacy lived on.  The film “Gettysburg” propelled The Killer Angels onto the New York Times Bestseller List, nineteen years after its publication.