Gods and Generals

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Gods and Generals
Soft cover edition of Gods and Generals
Author	Jeff Shaara
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject(s)	American Civil War
Genre(s)	Historical novel
Publication date	1996
Followed by	The Killer Angels

Gods and Generals is a novel which serves as a prequel to Michael Shaara's 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning work about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Written by Jeffrey Shaara after his father Michael's death in 1988, the novel relates events from 1858 through 1863 during the American Civil War, ending just as the two armies march toward Gettysburg. Since 1988, Jeff Shaara has written The Last Full Measure, which follows the events presented in The Killer Angels.

In 2003 Gods and Generals was made into a film directed by Ronald F. Maxwell and starring Robert Duvall and Jeff Daniels. The film shares most of its cast with Gettysburg, the film adaptation of The Killer Angels.

[edit] Plot

Copying his father's approach of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies (General Robert E. Lee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain), Shaara depicted the emotional drama of soldiers fighting old friends while accurately detailing historical details including troop movements, strategies, and tactical combat situations. General Hancock, for instance, spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the Confederate Army, "Lo" Armistead. The novel also deals with General Lee's disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson's religious fervor.

In addition to covering events leading up to the war, the book details the events of First Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. The film version provides only cursory coverage of immediate pre-war events, predominantly surrounding Lee and the secession of Virginia, and omits the Battle of Antietam.