Audio Book: The Killer Angels
Written by Michael Shaara (Audio Partners)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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Maybe only Vietnam holds the nation's historical curiosity like the Civil War. There is something so compelling embodied in that struggle, the pitting of brothers in blue and gray against the cessation of a Confederate state that never grows tiresome. Battlefield recreations draw thousands of summer crowds like Dixieland carnivals; the names Robert E. Lee, Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis are easy household names for the historically casual; all the while, the catalog of books and films is endlessly expanding and supplementing our collective understanding.

For Civil War-philes the Audio Partners edition of The Killer Angels is an apt supplement to the already well-chronicled novel. This work by the late Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1975 and was the basis for the epic motion picture "Gettysburg." In a period of American history already well represented on the bookstore shelf, The Killer Angels is a much-revered resource and deserves to be so. Performed by George Hearn, a Tony Award winner with foreword and afterward by Ronald F. Maxwell, (director of the 1992 film adaptation) it is hard to call the nine tapes anything short of comprehensive. For those lost easily by historical fiction, at 13 hours it comprises a monumental piece, but for ones champing at the bit to hear the virtues of courageous bloodshed extolled, this might be as good as it gets.

Gettysburg is often cited as a critical junction in the American epoch and, certainly, the watershed of that particular conflict; as pure story, through Shaara's novel, it culminates in something spellbinding.

© 2003 - Erick Mertz