July 1863. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia is invading the North. General Robert E. Lee has made this massive move with seventy thousand men in a determined effort to draw out the Union Army of the Potomac and mortally wound it. His right hand is General James Longstreet, loyal to Lee but against his plan. Opposing them is an unknown factor: General George Meade, who has taken command of the Army only two days before what will be perhaps the crucial battle of the Civil War.
In The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara recreates the Battle of Gettysburg, reconstructing the actions of the generals and their men over the three days of the battle.
Michael Shaara was a novelist, short story writer, and educator. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1928, earned a B.S. from Rutgers University and did graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Vermont. He spent two years in the service, worked as a policeman and a sailor, and became associate professor at Florida State University in 1961. He had many short stories published in magazines at the beginning of his writing career but it was a simple family vacation to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1966 that gave him the inspiration for his greatest achievement, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Killer Angels, originally published in 1974. Shaara died of a heart attack in 1988. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by his son Jeffrey Shaara, awarded annually.
The novel is also available in Spanish translation, Aneles Asesinos.
The Killer Angels is the basis for the motion picture, Gettysburg, starring Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, & Martin Sheen.
