A review by theeverglow17
Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears

5.0

Having read various portions of this book over the years, I decided now was the time to sit down and read it all. Sears has a way of being very detailed at times and very brief at other times. The book as a whole reads as a narration... with the occasional primary source quote thrown in. It is much easier to read and understand the battle from an episodic perspective than Trudeau's book "A Testing of Courage", which was chronological... and thus jumped all over the battlefield from paragraph to paragraph. One of the main complaints I have about this book is the maps. The maps just seem to be oddly placed... sometimes, he would cover nearly an entire portion of the battle before a map of that portion was shown. Other times, the map would appear at the very start of a certain section of action. This problem was magnified since I was reading the book on my iPad... making "flipping" to find the maps difficult.

Overall, however, this a fantastic book about Gettysburg. It's good for anyone with a knowledge of the battle who wants to go into more detail.