Courage on Little Round Top

by Thomas M. Eishen

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels is the sweeping story of the Battle of Gettysburg told from the point of view of officers from both sides of the fight. Thomas Eishen's Courage on Little Round Top is a detailed look at one of the battle's most be

Genres: Civil War

294 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Sonny · Rating 2 out of 5]

More marching, sleeping, and hunting for water than fighting. Characters were hard to keep up with due to being called different names by different people. Sometimes rank, first name, last name, brother, cousin, etc.

[Aj Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really an expert on the civil war. I liked that this book showed the authors passion for the subject. However, I think it would have benefited more if it focused more on the people and less on the blow for blow accounts of what was happening. The book would have benefitted from a better editor as the writing was often choppy and disjointed. Furthermore, there were places in which obvious grammar and punctuation issues were not caught.

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite movies is Gettysburg and my favorite scene is when Chamberlain leads the charge against the attacking rebels. This book covers that, although it has a lot of other material, telling the story from both the Southern and the Northern viewpoints. It points out just how bad deaths due to disease were during that war. It also shows how the failure of some of Lee's subordinates to do their jobs properly basically cost him the battle. From what I've read of both Northern and Southern armies that the subordinates had a lot of leeway in what they did rather than plain out obey the orders of their superiors.

The chain of command sometimes seemed to be more of a wet noodle than forged out of anything strong. The book also does a good job in showing just how much suffering, blood and gore could be expected in the battles.

[John Jorgensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not enjoy it as much as I would have thought. The title is a little deceiving in that the battle on LRT didn't take up but the last 40 pages or so.