Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman, USA, an historian, has been writing a brief day-by-day history of the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place 150 years ago this week. It’s told in the vernacular and it’s very interesting. If you’ve seen the movie Gettysburg you’ll be familiar with Chamberlain and his Maine volunteers at Little Round Top, but LTC Bateman hasn’t retold that story. He’s told other ones. It’s worth twenty minutes or so of your time to read.

Way back in 2003 I wrote a review of the book on which the film was based, by the way. Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels in the Sixties and Seventies and couldn’t get it published until 1974. It won the Pulitzer the following year but sold very few copies after that. Then Ken Burns made his PBS series The Civil War and the book was rediscovered. From the NYT article linked above: “It has since sold some 3.15 million copies, about 90 percent of the total copies sold since it first appeared, 40 years ago.”

I’ve been to Gettysburg, but I was too young to appreciate it. I’d like to go back someday.