Fascintating insight

Having a map of the battle on hand is good to see where they start and where they finish. The author uses ethnicity instead of nationality (French, German, Cuban) and the Irish seem to feature constantly (of course alll nationalists, even those from Ulster) on both sides, everywhere almost as if Americans weren't there. Saying that it fascinating, sad and brutal, which for military history buffs its very interesting.

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Story of commanders

I think it boils down to this, the story of the confederate commanders who did the least. And Lee would have been right to instigate courts marshal against several of his commanders. But the story so woefully and shamefully to this day as many a young man perished. Tis well worth a listen even today. The narrator Mr Martin did a first class job. And Tucker PhD nailed it. Most well done.

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Biased

If you are looking for a book about the Civil War written by a Lost Cause supporter this is the book for you. Many of the accusation aimed at Longstreet many years ago and subsequently discounted are brought up here again. I get the feeling that the author penned this with a large portrait of Lee in his office looking down on him.
The detail of people taking part in the charge itself is really good, well researched info. However it seems that any Federal background is discounted if it's not a quote of defeat.

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4 people found this helpful

Too repetitive

This book could have been about 1/3rd the length if the author didn't endlessly repeat his points or quotes.

To be sure the subject material is worth exploring and historically interesting but I got the constant feeling the author was a student trying to hit a word count for an essay.

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Another brown nosing for general Lee .

This book is a good listen and does dispel lots of the rubbish written about pickets charge backed up with evidence .
However allot of time is devoted to "the brilliant battle plan in lee's mind " at one point he says no evidence exsists of this two pincer attack !
This book is determined to push the legacy of general lee as the American napoloen well not only that he says over and over that he his better than Napoleon . Napoleon was not beaten by accident wellington Had never lost against napoleon 's forces and beat him the only time he came up against him .
The big glearing thing about this is where was general lee you get the impression he was sitting in a darkened room with his eyes shut throughout the whole battle maybe thinking about his amazing plan he didn't bother to tell everyone about as his artillery wasted all it's amo over three hours instead of the 15 minutes he had asked for !!and the rest of his plan didn't happen because of the generals under him at no point did he step in, and what plan survives contact with the enemy anyway ,were was lees flexibility ? he didn't have any because this amazing general had got rid of his artillery reserve and sent his caverlry off to act independently.
I am sorry but general Lee was not the god these books keep trying to tell us he was .

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4 people found this helpful

Masterful In-depth and captivating

Though this book is very long it holds you with every chapter. It is very in depth with first hand accounts to put to rest over a century of myth and misunderstanding.

The story of Pickett’s Charge was only one part of a three day battle but was the defining moment of the battle and like many battles before was close to being a victory

Well worth the read and the narration is easy to listen to and the first hand accounts make the story come to life.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent!

After having spent a week in Gettysburg this book filled in the gaps. Absolutely excellent account of only part of Gettysburg’s 3 day battle but brilliantly written.

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Very repetative and very repetitious.

There is interesting information hidden in this piece but the frequent repeating of key points and phrases is offputting. ignore the introduction which is overlong and leaves you feeling that all the key points have been made a dozen times over before the book proper has even started - I nearly gave up at that point not wanting to hear the phrase 'weak... right... centre' ever again. The author is clearly a devotee of General Lee and the labouring of the 'genius' of his plan and the ' lost cause' mythologising of other historians was also overdone.
I did learn much about the battle and its personalities great and humble, though there could have been more on the repulse of Stuart's cavalry action. A good editor could easily reduce this to eight hours without losing content. The performance took some getting used to particularly the strange emphasis and unusual pronounciation of some words (my being English but very used to American English). So, listen to this if you have many hours of manual work to do but not if you want a rip-roaring account of the battle of Gettysburg.

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Unconvincing nonsense.

Poorly written with vast numbers of repetitions. Poorly argued with evidence which shows the author to be wrong within his own text. Well researched, but full of assumptions that are not justified. He says Lees plan was brilliant, but then describes it as complicated, and therefore unlikely to succeed.

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Well researched, but rambling.

I made it two and a half hours into this 19 hour audiobook, and realised I hadn’t gained any more insight than I had in the first thirty minutes. While very well researched, and filled with contemporary evidence, the work is rambling in the extreme, constantly covers the same ground (to the point I honestly thought I’d accidentally skipped back without realising, and more than a few times), and never seems to offer any new information.

The book, simply, reiterates that Lee made a brilliant tactical play which was reminiscent, if not greater than, Napoleon’s movements in Europe. This genius, targeting the centre right (if I never hear those words again it’ll be too soon), was undermined by Longstreet’s seemingly deliberate attempts to ruin a plan he disagreed with. Otherwise the Union didn’t stand a chance.

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