The killer angels shaara6/12/2023 ![]() ![]() My Master’s Degree in History was conferred at a ceremony held in National Harbor, Maryland, and it seemed fitting that my next stop post-commencement should be in the realm of the multiple Civil War battlefields at Fredericksburg, Virginia. I still did not turn to it immediately, but I did take it along with me on a recent trip. Finally, he mailed me a copy, which thus enforced a sense of guilt and obligation upon me. The Killer Angels was actually pressed upon me by a friend who had often nagged me to read it. Why? Because quality historical fiction tends to deeply ingrain its impressions in the synapses: to this day I have to vigorously resist identifying as authentically biographical the characters of Burr and Lincoln that Gore Vidal so brilliantly conceived in those marvelous eponymous historical novels. Later, as I determined to become a historian, I deliberately eschewed this genre. I was actually reared on historical fiction – Michener, Clavell, Vidal – and I read voraciously in this arena, which had a profound effect upon my intellectual development with regard to both history and literature. ![]() Now I can officially proclaim that I have read it too! But what took me so long? ![]() ![]() I may possibly have been the last Civil War enthusiast yet to read The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, a historical novel I have heard repeatedly referenced by historians, battlefield guides, reenactors and Civil War buffs of virtually every stripe. ![]()
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