The gripping story of a well-known battle told from the perspective of the "other" side--the Confederates who just barely lost the fight for Little Round Top at the battle of Gettysburg

THE BATTLE OF LITTLE ROUND TOP AS IT HAS NEVER BEFORE SEEN-THROUGH THE EYES OF THE SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT THERE "Here is the real story of the epic fight for Little Round Top, shorn of the mythology long obscuring this pivotal Gettysburg moment. A vivid and eloquent book." --Stephen W. Sears, author of Gettysburg "Little Round Top has become iconic in Civil War literature and American memory. In the emotional recollection of our great war, if there was one speck on the landscape that decided a battle and the future of a nation, then surely this was it. The story of the July 2, 1863 struggle for that hill outside Gettysburg goes deeper into our consciousness than that, however. The men who fought for it then and there believed it to be decisive, and that is why they died for it. Glenn W. LaFantasie's Twilight at Little Round Top addresses that epic struggle, how those warriors felt then and later, and their physical and emotional attachment to a piece of ground that linked them forever with their nation's fate. This is military and social history at its finest." --W.C. Davis, author of Lincoln's Men and An Honorable Defeat "Few military episodes of the Civil War have attracted as much attention as the struggle for Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. This judicious and engaging book navigates confidently through a welter of contradictory testimony to present a splendid account of the action. It also places events on Little Round Top, which often are exaggerated, within the broader sweep of the battle. All readers interested in the battle of Gettysburg will read this book with enjoyment and profit." --Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War "In his beautifully written narrative, Glenn LaFantasie tells the story of the battle for Little Round Top from the perspective of the soldiers who fought and died in July 1863. Using well-chosen quotes from a wide variety of battle participants, TWILIGHT puts the reader in the midst of the fight--firing from behind boulders with members of the 4th Alabama, running up the hillside into battle with the men of the 140th New York, and watching in horror as far too many men die. This book offers an elegy to the courage of those men, a meditation on the meaning of war, and a cautionary tale about the sacrifices nations ask of their soldiers and the causes for which those sacrifices are needed." --Amy Kinsel, Winnrer of the 1993 Allan Nevins Prize for From These Honored Dead: Gettysburg in American Culture

This gripping narrative is an in-depth study of the valiant men of General John Caldwell’s Union Division during the Gettysburg Campaign. Caldwell’s Division made a desperate stand against a tough and determined Confederate force in farmer George Rose's nearly 20-acre Wheatfield. Ready for harvest, the infamous Wheatfield would change hands nearly six times in the span of two hours of fighting on July 2, becoming a trampled, bloody, no-man's land for thousands of wounded soldiers. Smith examines the lives of the Union soldiers in the ranks—as well as leaders Cross, Kelly, Zook, Brooke, and Caldwell himself. From Colonel Edward Cross’s black bandana, to the famed Irish Brigade's charge on Stoney Hill, to a lone young man from Washington County whose grave is marked in stone nearby, James Smith’s Storming the Wheatfield goes deep into the lives the soldiers, evoking a personal connection with the troops. Smith painstakingly contacted nearly one hundred descendants of Caldwell's soldiers, producing one of the most extensively researched narratives to date.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses comes the dramatic and definitive biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the history-altering professor turned Civil War hero. “A vital and vivid portrait of an unlikely military hero who played a key role in the preservation of the Union and therefore in the making of modern America.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILDER LEHRMAN LINCOLN PRIZE • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg—and told by two surgeons he would die—Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College. How did a stuttering young boy come to be fluent in nine languages and even teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? Award-winning historian Ronald C. White delves into these contradictions in this cradle-to-grave biography of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, from his upbringing in rural Maine to his tenacious, empathetic military leadership and his influential postwar public service, exploring a question that still plagues so many veterans: How do you make a civilian life of meaning after having experienced the extreme highs and lows of war? Chamberlain is familiar to millions from Michael Shaara’s now-classic novel of the Civil War, The Killer Angels, and Ken Burns’s timeless miniseries The Civil War, but in this book, White captures the complex and inspiring man behind the hero. Heavily illustrated and featuring nine detailed maps, this gripping, impeccably researched portrait illuminates one of the most admired but least known figures in our nation’s bloodiest conflict.

Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History An Economist Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier. Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story of army life in the Civil War: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny, one of history’s epic battles is given extraordinarily vivid new life.

On July 2nd, 1863, forces from the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Union’s Army of the Potomac clashed over the steep, rocky hill known as Little Round Top. This battle was one of the most brutal and devastating engagements of the American Civil War, and the North’s bloody victory there insured their triumph at Gettysburg, setting the stage for the South’s ultimate defeat. Using newly discovered documents and rare firsthand sources, acclaimed historian Glenn LaFantasie sheds new light on the dramatic story of this pivotal battle and tells the story as it truly unfolded, from the perspective of the brave men who fought and died there.

"No chapter in the annals of the most important battle of America's national epic has been more celebrated than the key struggle for possession of the rocky hill at the extreme southern flank of the battle line at Gettysburg, Little Round Top. And no contest during the battle of Gettysburg was deadlier or as dramatic as the high stakes showdown for Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2, 1863. Gettysburg was the decisive turning point of America's history, and Little Round Top was the crucial turning point of that three-day struggle in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Little Round Top was indeed the bloody Hill of Destiny, when the fate of America hung in the balance and was ultimately determined on the most decisive day of the three days at Gettysburg, July 2. However, some of the most important aspects of the famous struggle for Little Round Top have been distorted by misconceptions, myths, and layers of romance. For the first time, this ground-breaking book, America's Bloody Hill of Destiny, A New Look at the Struggle for Little Round Top, July 2, 1863, has presented a fresh and new look at the key leaders and hard-fighting common soldiers on both sides, who played the most important roles during the climactic struggle that decided the fate of America during one of the most pivotal moments in American history."

The many works on the Battle of Gettysburg have neglected the role of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, known for their extensive training and specialized tactics. This history is the first to explore the actions on July 2, 1863, of this Union Army regiment largely composed of men from Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources, this book seeks to clarify mysteries such as the identity of the non-commissioned officer who met with Company B of the 20th Maine and the location of Major Homer R. Stoughton during the battle. Following the understrength regiment as it confronts two Confederate brigades, this thorough historical narrative presents a long untold story of the Battle of Gettysburg.

From the acclaimed Civil War historian, and coinciding with 150th anniversary of the legendary battle: an intimate and richly readable account that draws the reader into the muck and grime of Gettysburg.

During the crucial three days of combat at Gettysburg, the most nightmarish place on the entire battlefield was appropriately named the Devil's Den. This jumble of huge boulders situated at the southern end of Houck's Ridge was truly a hell on earth during the decisive afternoon of July 2, 1863. The tenacious struggle that raged beyond control at the battle-line's southern end was all-important, because the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge anchored the left flank of the over-extended Union battle-line, before Federal troops occupied Little Round Top to the east. The battle-hardened veterans of Lieutenant General James Longstreet's First Corps captured this vital sector— the first Union left flank—in one of the few Southern successes of the second day, after some of the war's most bitter fighting. Nevertheless, the dramatic story of the successful turning of the first Union left flank has been long overlooked and ignored largely because of the giant historical shadow cast by the more famous struggle at Little Round Top, which was only the second and last fight for the southern flank of both armies on July 2. Therefore, the important contest for possession of the first Union left flank at the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge was crucial on the bloody afternoon that decided the fate of America. • Includes 22 colour and sepia-tinted photographs