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The novel The Killer Angels, by Michael Sharra is the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863 the union army and the confederate army fought the largest battle of the American Civil War. The book is based on real life people who were a part of the Civil War. The main characters were Gen. Robert Lee from the confederate army, Gen. James Longstreet, and Col. Joshua Chamberlain from the union army. The period covered in this book is Jun. 30-Jul 3, 1863. It takes place in a small town called Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The main cause of the war was because the confederate army wanted to secede from the rest of the states. Most of the story was from the perspective of the confederate leaders, so we were able to really capture what the south was really thinking throughout this whole book. The story for the most part is told in the 3rd person. The confederates controlled Seminary Ridge and the union army controlled Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Culp’s Hill, Little Round Top, and Big Round Top. Shaara's book very well tells the story of two great armies, both motivated and fighting for what each believes is a great and just cause, as they come together to fight one of the biggest battles ever fought in the world. This is a great novel of leadership, hardship, and history. Michael Shaara was born in 1928 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers and it was during his college years that he realized he wanted to become a writer. In his early thirties, Shaara published several award-winning science-fiction short stories in the most popular pulp magazines of the day. He then began to write straight fiction and published numerous short stories in Playboy, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan. After finding old letters from his great-grandfather, a member of the 4 th Georgia infantry who had been wounded at Gettysburg, The 1966 trip was followed by another trip in 1970 and seven years of work on the manuscript. In 1974, The Killer Angels was published. It does not make the Confederate side look bad, but instead, without being pro-south, shows the reader that the key ingredient that made the Confederate Army one of the great armies of all times was the fact that the Confederates truly believed in the justice of their cause.
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