Customer Reviews

The Last Full Measure

5 star:		(99)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Jeff Shaara follows in his father's footsteps ... big shoes to fill indeed! He does a highly admirable job of researching and writing about the heroes, both North and South, who fought during the last two years of the Civil War. This book provides the reader a ring-side seat to key battles and positions, as each side fights to their last full measure of strength. The reader is provided personal information about the lives of the major players: General Robert E. Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. We get inside the hearts and minds of these soldiers and although fiction it rings true to life. Historical fiction is a marvelous method to learn about detailed and important battles which became turning points in this most fundamental war in the history of the United States.

Most impressive descriptions are provided as General Robert E. Lee struggles in his heart and soul to send his valorous troops against the much better equipped Northern soldiers. We learn how strategy and insight gave the South advantages over technology and numbers, in the beginning. We learn that after Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was given command of the North, the tides turned ... and the reasons why. Maps are provided which give proper visualization to the word descriptions of strategic locations and key battles. Divided into four parts, the prolog to each section uses the words of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address very effectively. Each section includes descriptions of a wide range of events, thorough analysis, and human emotions for the years of the war and post war events that it covers.

The book goes beyond the war to include descriptons of when President Lincoln is shot. It concludes with an afterward that gives a wonderful summary of the post-war lives of major participants both Blue and the Gray. Reading this book was truly an eye-opening experience, filled with illuminating moments and unforgettable real people. It leaves the reader hungry to read more about the subject It compelled me to buy more books by this author - for example, "Gone for Soldiers" (the Mexican War) and "Rise to Rebellion" (the American Revolutionary War). Erika Borsos (erikab93)

"The Last Full Measure" has a much more difficult task to undertake than did the original book in the series, "The Killer Angels" by Mr. Shaara's father, Michael Shaara. This book covers the Civil War from the close of the battle at Gettysburg until shortly after the surrender of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, some 3 years, whereas "The Killer Angels" covered only a period of 4 days. Nonetheless, the author does an outstanding job of taking us into the heads of the major players in the war, and as always, does a particularly outstanding job with Confederate General Robert E. Lee. As in his other books, the author writes from the viewpoints of several of the critical individuals who were around at this point in the War.

I read this book after having read "Personal Memoirs" of Union General and former President Ulysses S. Grant, and was somewhat concerned that the sections written from Grant's point of view would be redundant. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were not, and in the end these were some of my favorite parts of the text. It is amazing how informative this book is, and how much effort the author makes to accurately portray the characters and educate the reader about the many interesting aspects of the war. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the Second Battle of the Wilderness, the description of the earthworks and the men who guarded them around Richmond and Petersburg, VA and the fast-paced action that led to Lee's ultimate surrender.

This is a very well-written conclusion to this series. The author covers a lot of ground, but manages to not overwhelm the reader and keep them very engaged. I highly recommend this book.

While "Killer Angels" tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg in poignant detail, and "Gods and Generals" provides the reader with insight into the minds of the men who commanded the armies of the Civil War, in "The Last Full Measure" Jeff Shaara brings you to your knees. I do a lot of reading during my lunch hour (I hate eating alone in restaurants!) I was sitting in a crowded local McDonald's when I read the part about Robert E. Lee's decision to surrender and the surrender itself and I sat there and cried. I reread it several times and cried every time. When I got home that evening, I read it to my husband. I had to stop several times because my voice kept breaking. By the time I finished we were both in tears. In all of the reading I have done about the civil war, I've never understood the pain of the South's surrender until now. It was heartbreaking! If you care anything about the South, or if you just want to understand why the Confederate soldiers continued to fight when there was nothing left to fight with, read this book!

In reading this book I found it a lot more enjoyable than the other three stories. It gets right down into the heart and soul of the main characters in the book. I don't think that it was to wordy. I think he (Jeff Shaara) put as much effort possible into telling a complete and detailed account on what it was like for the soldiers in the Civil War. I think it is the best out of all three because it really gets into detail about what the soldiers had to go through in order to fight for their country. It shows how through bad and good the men from the South never gave up until they had given their LAST FULL MEASURE! I don't care what anyone says about this book being to wordy because I just think that they need an excuse to put down Jeff. Overall I think Jeff did an unbelievable job finishing what his father started and I hope that he continues to write books about how it was just for regular soldiers. I would like to read how it must have felt for them and not just the generals and people who never got dirty.

The general consensus seems to be that Jeff Shaara is a good writer, but not up to his father's standards. I have to disagree. This book was thoroughly enjoyable and quite moving. Not only that, Jeff manages to write the book in the same style as his father, likely in a successful attempt to tie the trilogy together in similar prose. This is a lot harder to do than one might suspect.

Also, to Jeff's credit, the scope of The Last Full Measure is greater than The Killer Angels, which focused exclusively on Gettysburg. Jeff takes up the war after Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, and follows it to its conclusion at Appomattox. His rendering of the horrific conditions of Lee's army as it tries to escape the inevitable, and the poignant moments of the final battles and the climax at the courthouse are as good as historical writing gets. I believe Jeff surpasses Michael's ability to tap into and reveal the minds and emotions of the key players, Lee, Grant, Chamberlain, and others.

Don't discount or skip this book based on the comparative naysayers' comments. I place The Last Full Measure on the top shelf of Civil War literature. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

... of the American Civil War. I would say this is an excellent history for those who do not particularly have the patience or care to read a history book.

Set as a novel viewing the events of the war through the eyes of it's major players, the story begins with Lee's army at the swollen banks of the Potomac after his retreat from the disaster at Gettysburg. Although the novel does not include the recruitment process of Grant for command of all Union forces as Lt. General (a rank last held by George Washington), nor the strategy session between Grant and his favorite, Gen. W.T. Sherman; it does give a glimpse of why Lincoln chose this man to led the Army.

With the selection of Grant the focus of the war is changed from the dubious capture of Richmond as a means to defeat the South to the defeat of Lee himself. Grant sums it up in a sentence to Gen. Meade (who he leaves in charge of the Army of the Potomac) saying, "Where Lee goes, you will go too." Grant knows that the fighting heart of the South is not in Richmond, but in its most popular leader, Gen. R.E. Lee. When Lee is beaten, the war will end ... and of course, history bears this out.

The tale takes us through the Union defeat in the burning thickets and forest of the Wilderness; Lee's (and Stuart's) brilliant disengagement and race to Spotsylvania and the mule shoe salient -- where the most vicious fighting of the war takes place -- the two armies positioned literally yards from each other, clubbing and stabbing one another to death over and through chinks in the log barricades. It follows Lee's move to the North Ana River where Grant's leaders make a terrible mistake in deployment, but are spared disaster because Lee remains in his tent, too ill to take advantage of the situation. The fight moves further south to Cold Harbor and the wholesale slaughter of Union troops in Grant's biggest mistake of the war. Over 7,000 men are killed in twenty minutes of battle. And finally to the siege of the strategic rail center at Petersburg.

Ultimately Lee will leave Petersburg and march his army west only to be dogged by the Union and finally give up the fight as hopeless at Appomattox.

Although slow moving at times, the average reader will come to know the last year of the Civil War in a way that standard history texts cannot tell it. This is the most critical period of time for each nation's survival. If Lee can hold out for a few more months and Lincoln is not reelected, the pacifist movement in the North will permit the Confederacy their independence and the Union will be broken. With the defeat of Lee in Virginia and the victories of Sherman in Georgia, the South will give up the fight and the Union preserved. We all know the eventual outcome of the struggle. This book gives us the personalized details of how desperate a fight it really was.

Some of the more avid history buffs might be a bit disappointed at the coverage of some events (such as the battle of Cold Harbor), but all in all, this is a fine book on the greatest event in American history. Well written and very readable.

*** Highly Recommended ***

~pjm~

I wanted very much to enjoy this book.

Back in the early 70's, I was on a graduate school sabbatical from the Army. The Killer Angels had just received the Pulitzer, and the man who shared my office, another Army officer bound for the West Point faculty, encouraged me to read it. He later re-wrote the Army leadership manual with references to Chamberlain at Little Round Top. For years, the Army harbored something like a Chamberlain cult.

The trouble with Last Full Measure -- like its predecessor, Gods and Generals -- is that is so very broadly focused, we are unable to put aside the simple fact that we know how it ends. TKA told the story of a few days, and the points of view were carefully chosen. Jeff Shaara didn't have the luxury of such lapidary perfection, since he chose to tell the story of the whole war in the east. Under such circumstances, the normal tools of fiction are likely to be trampled by the rampaging elephant of history.

Some of the touches are nice, but the characters tend to be too self-consciously noble in their private motives. Wars are won by SOBs, not by generals with the qualities of a noble horse. In particular, Jackson seems a bit mild and introspective; he may have been introspective (though I don't think I'd like to eavesdrop on his private musings!), but such mildness as he possessed serves best in giving depth to a manner and motivation as hard as obsidian, and somewhat blacker. This general's God was not given to forgiveness and leniency, and Jackson's background craziness -- like Patton's and yet different -- is far more interesting than the kitsch of gentle religiosity.

For a different and perhaps more realistic view, I recommend Tom Wicker's "Unto this Hour." As a Civil War buff, I wouldn't have missed Jeff Shaara's work, but read Bierce as an antidote for all that idealizing.

No, Jeff Shaara is not an author that matches the abilities of his father. Nonetheless, "The Last Full Measure" is a wonderful climax to the Shaara father/son trilogy. It is moving, thought-provoking, and captivating from the first page to the last.

Perhaps the most moving aspect of the book is the protrayal and description of the Southern Army and its' commanders as they realize that the Cause has been lost. I was moved to tears as I read the chapter in which Lee realizes that the end is at hand and prepares to meet General Grant.

The book, indeed the entire series, is thought provoking as it shows why the soldiers fought this war. Contrary to the advocates of political correctness and the truly ignorant, the majority of the Southern army did not fight to own slaves. Many, if not most of the soldiers in the Southern Army fought to protect their families and property from what was honestly seen as unjust aggression. Recognizing what motivated the soldiers to fight only adds to the sadness as the leaders on the Southern side realize that they have lost. Similarly, we continue to see why soldiers of the Northern army fought in this war. This adds to the jubiliation the reader feels as the Union is preserved.

The style is flowing and keeps the reader interested from start to finish. One does not need to be a scholar to enjoy this book. If one wants to learn of the war, "The Last Full Measure" is a wonderful place to learn the lessons of the Civil War.

I read "The Last Full Measure" as part of a self-projected summer reading list that included Jeff Shaara's father's work "The Killer Angels" as well; thus, this review could actually be a two-sided coin -- including reflections on that previous work by the senior (and late) Mr. Shaara.

"The Last Full Measure" is assentially the third part of a novel trilogy that starts where "The Killer Angels" leaves off: with Robert E. Lee's defeat and subsequent retreat from the North following the battle of Gettysburg. It then goes on to follow Lee's and Ulysses S. Grant's attempts to make some sort of sense of the military fiascoes recently effecting both armies. However, while Ulyses S. Grant enjoys the full confidences of a greatful Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee is faced with a staff of doubtful generals more inclined to see Lee as a slowly deteriorating old man, and a Jefferson Davis who has, by this late stage of the war and in review of a disastrous military defeat, become a shattered politician living in complete denial.

Both this book and it's predecessor are incredibly humane in their portrayal of individuals who have already recieved famed status in United States History books. Lee struggles with an illness that threatens to ruin his ability to hold his army together; Grant struggles with alcoholism, which threatens to ruin others' confidences in him; Lincoln struggles with holding the North together and keeping the people focussed on his vision of a completely unified nation; and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain fights with the ability to keep his humanity while realizing the killing nature of all men in war -- a reality that if man is created as an angel on Earth, then war must prove man to be a "killer angel."

I have studied the American Civil War for several years, and have paid close attention to the main figures of that war. And while I have seen countless dramatizations of the last days of the Civil War, and read the words of the politicians and the soldiers who took part in this great event, it was not until this book that I could relate to these men of the past. The sorrow for the south and the great joy of the North make you trully feel as though you are standing there at Appomatox in April 1865. Without a doubt, this book is the most vivid emotional record of the event to come from a secondary author, and one that takes the era of the war from black and white to color.

...through his son Jeff. THE LAST FULL MEASURE may never live up to THE KILLER ANGELS, but this novel is compelling in it's own right. As Michael Shaara was able to do with the battle of Gettysburg, Jeff Shaara puts us on an emotional and spiritual level with the men who fought in the last two years of the Civil War and beyond, while once again making sure that the real-life events are told with almost 100% accuracy! You're with Robert E. Lee on his death bed; you're with Joshua Lawerence Chamberlain as his men storm the defenses of Petersburg; and you're with U.S. Grant at Cold Harbor. Jeff is a fine novelist, and his father's legacy will never be forgotten! Followed by the novels GONE FOR SOLDIERS and RISE TO REBELLION, all of which were preceded by Jeff's first novel, GODS AND GENERALS! Grade: A+