Synopses & Reviews
Michael Shaara was born in Jersey City in 1928 and graduated from Rutgers University in 1951. His early science fiction short stories were published in
Galaxy magazine in 1952. He later began writing other works of fiction and published more than seventy short stories in many magazines, including
The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and
Redbook. His first novel,
The Broken Place, was published in 1968. But it was a simple family vacation to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1964 that gave him the inspiration for his greatest achievement, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
The Killer Angels, published in 1974. Michael Shaara went on to write two more novels,
The Noah Conspiracy and
For Love of the Game, which was published after his death in 1988.
Jeff Shaara is the New York Times bestselling author of A Chain of Thunder, A Blaze of Glory, The Final Storm, No Less Than Victory, The Steel Wave, The Rising Tide, To the Last Man, The Glorious Cause, Rise to Rebellion, and Gone for Soldiers, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure—two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, The Killer Angels. Shaara was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives again in Tallahassee.
Review
"Brilliant does not even begin to describe the Shaara gift. Thank gods and generals that it was passed from father to son." Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Review
"Lively, fast-paced....A worthy companion to The Killer Angels....Shaara brilliantly charts the war, the exploits of the combatants and their motivations. He also concisely shows how the early parts of the campaign unfolded. His accounts of the battles of Williamsburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville are exciting....Though the story of the Civil War has been told many times, this is the rare version that conveys what it must have felt like." Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"Shaara's beautifully sensitive novel delves deeply into the empathetic realm of psycho-history, where enemies do not exist just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield....[He] succeeds with his historical novel through fully realized characters who were forced to decide their loyalties amid the horrors of their divided nation." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"The battle of Gettysburg featured a cast of characters dramatically and poignantly portrayed in Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. This new novel by his son Jeff Shaara describes the interconnected paths that brought these men together at this crossroads of our history. Readers of The Killer Angels won't want to miss Gods and Generals." James McPherson, Author of Battle Cry of Freedom
Synopsis
The epic Civil War saga begun in Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Killer Angels continues in a sweeping novel of the years preceding Gettysburg. Jeff Shaara carries forth his father's vision in a monumental story of the Civil War's beginning and the lives, passions, and careers of its great military leaders.
Synopsis
"BRILLIANT DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE SHAARA GIFT. THANK GODS AND GENERALS THAT IT WAS PASSED FROM FATHER TO SON."
--Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"LIVELY, FAST-PACED . . . A worthy companion to The Killer Angels . . . Shaara brilliantly charts the war, the exploits of the combatants and their motivations. He also concisely shows how the early parts of the campaign unfolded. His accounts of the battles of Williamsburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville are exciting. . . . Though the story of the Civil War has been told many times, this is the rare version that conveys what it must have felt like."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"SHAARA'S BEAUTIFULLY SENSITIVE NOVEL DELVES DEEPLY into the empathetic realm of psycho-history, where enemies do not exist--just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield. . . . [He] succeeds with his historical novel through fully realized characters who were forced to decide their loyalties amid the horrors of their divided nation."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"The battle of Gettysburg featured a cast of characters dramatically and poignantly portrayed in Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. This new novel by his son Jeff Shaara describes the interconnected paths that brought these men together at this crossroads of our history. Readers of The Killer Angels won't want to miss Gods and Generals."
--James McPherson, Author of Battle Cry of Freedom
Synopsis
In this brilliantly written epic novel, Jeff Shaara traces the lives, passions, and careers of the great military leaders from the first gathering clouds of the Civil War. Here is Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, a hopelessly by-the-book military instructor and devout Christian who becomes the greatest commander of the Civil War; Winfield Scott Hancock, a captain of quartermasters who quickly establishes himself as one of the finest leaders of the Union army; Joshua Chamberlain, who gives up his promising academic career and goes on to become one of the most heroic soldiers in American history; and Robert E. Lee, never believing until too late that a civil war would ever truly come to pass. Profound in its insights into the minds and hearts of those who fought in the war, Gods and Generals creates a vivid portrait of the soldiers, the battlefields, and the tumultuous times that forever shaped the nation.
Synopsis
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS
by
MICHAEL SHAARA and JEFF SHAARA
THE CIVIL WAR TRILOGY
GODS AND GENERALS
THE KILLER ANGELS
THE LAST FULL MEASURE
“Brilliant does not even begin to describe the Shaara gift.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
About the Author
The story of
Gods and Generals begins with Michael Shaara, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic
The Killer Angels. A native of New Jersey, Michael Shaara grew to be an adventurous young man: over the years, he found work as a sailor, a paratrooper, a policeman, and an English professor at Florida State University. In 1952, his son Jeff was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Michael's interest in Gettysburg was prompted by some letters written by his great-grandfather, who had been wounded at the great battle while serving with the 4th Georgia Infantry. In 1966, he took his family on a vacation to the battlefield and found himself moved.
In 1970, Michael Shaara returned to Gettysburg with his son Jeff. The pair crisscrossed the historic site, gathering detailed information for the father's novel-in-progress. In 1974, the novel was published with the title The Killer Angels. This gripping fictional account of the three bloody days at Gettysburg won Michael Shaara a Pulitzer Prize and a vast, appreciative audience. To date it has sold two million copies.
When Michael Shaara died in 1988, his son Jeff began to manage his literary estate. It was a legacy he knew well, having helped his father create it. When director Ron Maxwell filmed the movie Gettysburg, based on The Killer Angels, he asked Jeff to serve as a consultant. Maxwell encouraged Shaara to continue the story his father began; inspired, Jeff planned an ambitious trilogy, with The Killer Angels as the centerpiece, following the war from its origins to its end. The third volume of the trilogy is The Last Full Measure.
Jeff's latest novel is Rise of the Rebellion, about the Revolutionary War. He and his wife, Lynne, divide their time between Tampa, Florida, and Missoula, Montana.