Gettysburg, the First Day.

Right now reading. T'was a xmas gift from a few years back, but I finally picked it up. I read - and fell in love with - Gettysburg The Second Day (can there be a better name for a book??)maybe 6-7y ago. Between the Second Day and this, the First Day, I also read Pfantz'z Culps Hills . Pfantz worked @ Gettysburg National Park for a long time, and the books that he wrote on the battle - three, so far - are all excellent. He was @ the site for his wrking life, and it very obviousy knows it all. The field, the battle, the personalities, the various points of disagreement. he's a master. I love him.

But these books are very hard to read. There are lots of maps that detail movements of units across individual fields - the book is totally into such minutea (sic) and it's a trick to try and trace them. And Civil War battles are very hard - one side would advance into a field, win it while the otherside retreated in disaray, and then the inevitable counterattck would happen - w/ the inevitable retreat, counterattack, etc etc etc... Very difficult to follow.

I still love the rush his first book gave me. By the time I'd turned to Civil War books in the 90's, Pfantz's Gettysburg the Second Day blew me away. It really opened me up to this war -reading about this war, that is - W/ Stephen Sears, he is my favourite author of that era. And there is a danger - I ordered Bent Noswaorty's take on Civil War battle. Nosworthy wrote two deeply dense and complicated books on early 'linear warfare'* , and it will be here soon. Is the Civil War replacing Christ??

*='linear warfare' = think lines of troops all marching in lines all upstanding and and muskets and all that - y'know, the American Revolution style.