Shaara's narrative is secure and the momentum of his novel finely paced. Its mood is best summed up by Brig. Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top, who a year later watches a mass grave being filled with the bodies of Union and Confederate dead. It was a question that was understandably voiced with bitterness when Gen. George Meade failed to press his advantage after Gettysburg and Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia retreated to fight a two-year battle of attrition. One of the strengths of this prodigiously researched book is its reading of Grant not just as a new commander but the harbinger of a new and modern kind of warfare.
Grant is here an emblematic and prophetic figure who recognizes and embraces change.
With superior manpower and resources, he is saddened but willing to sustain horrendous casualties as he harries the beleaguered Lee. In their confrontation, both men must deal with the truculence and plain stupidity among their subordinates and back-stabbing sabotage on the political front. Shaara's reading of both Grant and Lee is traditional and close to the facts. When he makes assumptions, they are valid. He sees Lee as a man of piety for whom the mounting setbacks on the field were a severe test of faith.