Customer Reviews

Isn't This Glorious!: The 15th, 19th, And 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiments at Gettysburg's Copse of Trees

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Non-Civil War buffs may sometimes feel there are already more than enough books on this national catastrophe--even works centered on the iconic Battle of Gettysburg, as this one is. But "Isn't This Glorious" truly is different, worth the attention of any intelligent reader.
What makes it so? For one thing, it tells a story that will be new to most people. For another, it tells it with an uncommon humanity.
The book is about four Massachusetts infantry regiments involved in the fighting at Gettysburg's famous Copse of Trees. They perform heroically; and they suffer very heavy casualities, both dead and wounded. Some years later, though, they discover that they have been effectively written out of the history of the battle. This has happened largely through the misplacement of battlefield markers.
It is not that anyone had any malice against the Massachusetts men. Rather, others had been, perhaps, a little more zealous than they in advancing the claims of their own units. So the story became, in effect, not only the tale of what some men did long ago on a bloody battlefield, but on what happened later when what glory there was in this great calamity was supposedly allocated.
What gives "Isn't This Glorious" its special humanity is that authors Root and Stocker go to great lengths to introduce us to the officers and men of the four Massachusetts regiments whose place in history seems to hang in the balance. We meet their wives and children, we learn of their education and of the work they did before the war.
Too often we have the experience of seeing them blown apart before our eyes; or we see them, in the dreary years after Appomatox, crippled forever and reduced to penury.
Historians seldom write about such things. If they did, there might be far fewer wars.
"Isn't This Glorious" has one more thing to recommend it. It is a beautiful example of book design, and features original pullout maps and pictures of many of the soldiers mentioned in the text. Even a reader who hates Civil War books might want to have this one, because it is a work of art.