Gettysburg: The Final Fury

This classic work by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton, one of the great historians of the Civil War, takes an incisive look at the turning point of the war, when the great armies of the North and South came to Gettysburg in July 1863. Engaging and authoritative, Catton analyzes the course of events at Gettysburg, clarifying its causes and bringing to life the most famous battle ever fought on American soil. Paying full heed to the human tragedies that occurred, Gettysburg: The Final Fury gives an hour-by-hour account of the three-day battle, from the skirmish that began the engagement, to Pickett’s ill-fated charge. Catton provides context for the fateful decisions made by each army’s commanders, and examines the battle’s military and political consequences, placing it within the larger narrative of the Civil War and American history.

“Military history . . . at its best.” —Chicago Tribune

“Nothing in our time makes the Civil War as alive as the writings of Bruce Catton.” —The Baltimore Sun

“No one around can write of the ‘terrible beauty of an army’ the way Bruce Catton can.” —The Washington Post Book World

“A rare combination of talent as a writer and historian.” —The Kansas City Star

“No one ever wrote American history with more easy grace, beauty and emotional power, or greater understanding of its meaning, than Bruce Catton. There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton’s work that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.” —Oliver Jensen, former editor of American Heritage

“[Catton combines] a scholar’s appreciation of the Grand Design with a newsman’s keenness for meaningful vignette. . . . Catton created an ‘enlisted man’s-eye view’ of the war that treated humanely the errors on both sides.” —Newsweek

“All [of Catton’s Civil War books] are remarkably good books, distinguised by a vivid, fast-moving style.” —The New York Times Book Review

“One of the most skillful old pros that the craft [of historical narrative] has ever known.” —Saturday Review of Books