This historical novel, first published in 1974, has been a bestseller in America and has sold over two million copies, but this is its first appearance in Britain or here. The setting is the American Civil War, the date is 1863 and the centre-piece of the story is, of course, the Battle of Gettysburg in which Lee lost his lustre and the South effectively lost the war, or at least its best chance of winning it.of the heroes for the North is Chamberlain, the defender of, Round Top. The prose style, comes pretty much off the peg, and in general this is a piece of robust storytelling on a fairly, popular level, without frills but also without sentimentality.
Shaara, incidentally, died in 1988.