The Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg have inspired scrutiny from virtually every angle. Standing out amid the voluminous scholarship, this book is not merely one more narrative history of the events that transpired before, during, and after those three momentous July days in southern Pennsylvania. Rather, it focuses on and analyzes nineteen critical decisions by Union and Confederate commanders that determined the particular ways in which those events unfolded.

Matt Spruill, a retired U.S. Army colonel who studied and taught at the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, contends that, among the many decisions made during any military campaign, a limited number—strategic, operational, tactical, organizational—make the difference, with subsequent decisions and circumstances proceeding from those defining moments. At Gettysburg, he contends, had any of the nineteen decisions he identifies not been made and/or another decision made in its stead, all sorts of events from those decision points on would have been different and the campaign and battle as we know it today would appear differently. The battle might have lasted two days or four days instead of three. The orientation of opposing forces might have been different. The battle could well have occurred away from Gettysburg rather than around the town. Whether Lee would have emerged the victor and Meade the vanquished remains an open question, but whatever the outcome, it was the particular decision-making delineated here that shaped the campaign that went into the history books.

Along with his insightful analysis of the nineteen decisions, Spruill includes a valuable appendix that takes the battlefield visitor to the actual locations where the decisions were made or executed. This guide features excerpts from primary documents that further illuminate the ways in which the commanders saw situations on the ground and made their decisions accordingly.

“Hassler’s history will survive as our most detailed narrative of the first day’s battle, examining the day’s action so minutely that no succeeding historian of Gettysburg will be able to ignore it. Hassler’s book has solid virtues in addition to its thoroughness of detail: it offers a persuasive argument that the first day’s events largely determined the eventual outcome of the battle; Hassler displays uncommonly complete knowledge of the battlefield terrain [and] makes uniquely good use of the information that can be gleaned from the monuments and markers on the battlefield.” – American Historical Review

In Gettysburg: The Living and the Dead, writer Kent Gramm and photographer Chris Heisey tell the famous battle’s story through the eyes of those who lived and died there. Unlike histories that simply recount the three furious days in July 1863, this book transports readers onto the battlefield and into the event’s historical echoes, making for a delightful, immersive experience.
 
Creative nonfiction, fiction, dramatic dialogue, and poetry combine with full-color photographs to convey the essential reality of the famous battlefield as a place both terrible and beautiful. The living and the dead contained here include Confederates and Yankees, soldiers and civilians, male and female, young and old. Visitors to the battlefield after 1863, both well known and obscure, provide the voices of the living. They include a female admiral in the U.S. Navy and a man from rural Virginia who visits the battlefield as a way of working through the death of his son in Iraq. The ghostly voices of the dead include actual participants in the battle, like a fiery colonel and a girl in Confederate uniform, as well as their representatives, such as a grieving widow who has come to seek her husband.   
 
Utilizing light as a central motif and fourscore and seven voices to evoke how Gettysburg continues to draw visitors and resound throughout history, alternately wounding and stitching the lives it touches, Gramm’s words and Heisey’s photographs meld for a historical experience unlike any other. Gettysburg: The Living and the Dead offers a panoramic view wherein the battle and battlefield of Gettysburg are seen through the eyes of those who lived through it and died on it as well as those who have sought meaning at the site ever since. 
 

Lucius Fairchild: Civil War Hero introduces young readers to a great Wisconsin soldier-statesman. From panning for gold, to losing an arm during a Civil War battle, to campaigning hard for elections, Lucius learned early that it takes courage and persistence to succeed.

 

Lucius's life brimmed with adventure. As a young man, he headed west across sprawling prairies and high mountains to seek his fortune in California's gold mines. Finding little gold, Lucius tried his hand as a beef supplier and made his money there. When volunteers were needed to fight in the Civil War, Lucius proclaimed, "no one can take a clatter at that . . . more easily than I can." Lucius grieved over the loss of his men of the Iron Brigade in battles like that of Brawner's Farm, and his own left arm was shattered at Gettysburg. With the glow of a returning hero, Lucius went on to win three terms as governor of Wisconsin, and then to secure diplomatic posts in Europe.

 

Yet, even as Lucius advanced his own career, he (like his contemporary Cordelia Harvey) never forgot the importance of serving others. As governor and first lady, Lucius and his wife, Frances, swiftly came to the aid of Peshtigo Fire victims. And as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, he made helping veterans top priority.

 

Sidebars on the California Gold Rush, military rank, Free States and Slave States, the Iron Brigade, and the Gettysburg Address complement this history-rich biography.

Among the myriad books examining the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Summer Thunder is one of a kind. A terrific resource for is visitors to the national military park, it explores the clashing armies’ deployment of artillery throughout the battle—from one position to another, from one day to the next. Matt Spruill, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former licensed Gettysburg guide, carefully takes readers to every point on the battlefield where artillery was used, and combining his own commentary with excerpts from the Official Records and other primary sources, he reveals the tactical thinking of both Union and Confederate commanders.

Spruill uses a sequential series of thirty-five “stops,” complete with driving instructions and recent photographs, to guide readers around the park and orient them about where the opposing units were placed and what happened there. Detailed maps depict the battlefield as it was in 1863 and are marked with artillery positions, including the number of guns in action with each battery. Meanwhile, the passages from primary sources allow the reader to see key events as the actual participants saw them. The book also brims with information
about the various artillery pieces used by both sides, from howitzers to Parrott rifles and Napoleon field guns, and the critical role they played over the course of the battle, right up its outcome.

Summer Thunder devotes a chapter to each of the three days of the historic devotes a chapter to each of the three days of the historic Summer Thunder engagement between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. One can follow the battle chronologically in its entirety from Stop 1 to Stop 35, or concentrate on a specific day or a specific area. In fact, the maps and orientation
information are of such detail that the book can be used even without being on the battlefield, making it an invaluable reference work for expert and novice alike.