The Killer Angels (by Michael Shaara)

I read this for the "read an award-winning book from the year you were born" category: The Killer Angels, an historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the year I was born.

Not sure how I landed on this book as I am not usually a person who reads war books or historical novels or books with only white men in them, plus this has a ton of battlefield description (and I hate descriptions of scenery) yet this was so compelling I couldn't put it down. It is written from the perspective of some of the key players at Gettysburg, both Union and Confederate, and is completely vivid and humanizing.  

I did have to look up the author's assertion that Robert E. Lee was "against slavery." He wasn't. There are some issues with how the author engages on the topic but "the South claims this war isn't about slavery but it's totally about slavery" is definitely articulated.  But Shaara is more interested in exploring the battle itself and the heroic actions of men on both sides and on those terms, it's a compelling story.

This is like, the opposite of a book I thought I would read and enjoy. And yet, I loved reading it.