Rome or Hallowed Ground

Rome: History and Landscape

Author: Angus Konstam

Rome is the Eternal City and the true city of empire with its legacy of columns, triumphal arches, and monumental buildings. But this is not the whole story of this ancient city: Rome is also a thriving and busy metropolis where Italian government and commerce rub shoulders together to the soundtrack of modern life. In addition Rome encompasses the tiny city state of Vatican City, the domain of the Roman Catholic Church and the home of the Pope.

All roads, of course, lead to Rome and not just for the ancient Coliseum, Trajan’s Column, Saint Paul’s Basilica, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps—visitors also discover the delights of the lesser-known streets with their lively chatter and bustle. Romans enjoy street life to a degree unknown in many cooler climates, and while the restaurants and bars are famous for their atmosphere on no account miss the opportunity to savor a wide array of delicious food and drink. The city is arguably even more beautiful at night when lights pick out the details and silhouettes of the buildings and monuments.

From Coliseum to Castell San Angelo, from the Ancient Roman Forum to St. Peter’s Square at the heart of the Vatican; from the Piazza Navona to the cobbles of the Appian Way—Rome is a beautiful and historic city that will delight readers of this book.

Discover the glory of Rome’s past and richness of its present-day in this lavishly illustrated book. After an introductory essay on the history of Rome, the reader embarks on a chronological photographic journey around the city from its classical beginnings to the present.

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg

Author: James M McPherson

“[I]n a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract.”
—President Abraham Lincoln

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans.

The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other place in the United States, Gettysburg is indeed hallowed ground. It’s no surprise that it is one of the nation’s most visited sites (nearly two million annual visitors), attracting tourists, military buffs, and students of American history.

McPherson, who has led countless tours of Gettysburg over the years, makes stops at Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill, and Little Round Top, among other key locations. He reflects on the meaning of the battle, describes the events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater context of American and world history. Along the way, he intersperses stories of his own encounters with the place over several decades, as well as debunking several popular myths about the battle itself.

What brought those 165,000 soldiers—75,000 Confederate, 90,000 Union—to Gettysburg? Why did they lock themselves in such a death grip across these once bucolic fieldsuntil 11,000 of them were killed or mortally wounded, another 29,000 were wounded and survived, and about 10,000 were “missing”—mostly captured? What was accomplished by all of this carnage? Join James M. McPherson on a walk across this hallowed ground as he be encompasses the depth of meaning and historical impact of a place that helped define the nation’s character.

USA Today

What word in American history resonates more than any other?

James McPherson makes a convincing case that the word is Gettysburg in his slim but informative and eloquent book, Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg. — Bob Minzesheimer

The New York Times

For 20 years James M. McPherson has been conducting private tours of the Gettysburg battlefield. Hallowed Ground puts such an expedition on paper. — Raye Snover

The Los Angeles Times

One could ask for no better guide. McPherson may be the best-known living historian of the American Civil War. — John Rhodehamel

Publishers Weekly

The country's most distinguished Civil War historian, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for Battle Cry of Freedom) and professor at Princeton, offers this compact and incisive study of the Battle of Gettysburg. In narrating "the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere," McPherson walks readers over its presently hallowed ground, with monuments numbering into the hundreds, many of which work to structure the narrative. They range from the equestrian monument to Union general John Reynolds to Amos Humiston, a New Yorker identified several months after the battle when family daguerreotypes found on his body were recognized by his widow. Indeed, while McPherson does the expected fine job of narrating the battle, in a manner suitable for the almost complete tyro in military history, he also skillfully hands out kudos and criticism each time he comes to a memorial. He praises Joshua Chamberlain and the 2oth Maine, but also the 14oth New York and its colonel, who died leading his regiment on the other Union flank in an equally desperate action. The cover is effective and moving: the quiet clean battlefield park above, the strewn bodies below. The author's knack for knocking myths on the head without jargon or insult is on display throughout: he gently points out that North Carolinians think that their General Pettigrew ought to share credit for Pickett's charge; that General Lee's possible illness is no excuse for the butchery that charge led to; that African-Americans were left out of the veterans' reunions; and that the kidnapping of African-Americans by the Confederates has been excised from most history books. This book is a very good thing in a remarkably small package. (May)

Library Journal

McPherson's moving and compelling description of the historic Gettysburg battlefield is a written version of the Princeton professor's walking tours with his students. A Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on the Civil War (Battle Cry of Freedom), he leads the reader with ease and familiarity through the physical and personal landscape of this turning point in U.S. history. The text is brief but manages to be comprehensive in its overview of the three-day battle-the bloodiest in our history-while including fascinating stories and refuting persistent legends. McPherson writes in a conversational tone as he describes the atmosphere of the site and what Gettysburg has come to mean. He offers perspective on how the surroundings would have appeared at the time-some wooded areas were previously cleared and some present-day fields used to be orchards in 1863. Specific street directions are provided, and the author adds informative background on several individual monuments and markers. This format is equally adaptable for a reader touring the grounds in person or in an armchair at home. Recommended for all libraries with a Civil War collection.-Elizabeth Morris, formerly with Otsego Dist. P.L., MI

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-McPherson focuses on the period July 1-3, 1863, and explains why readers should know about the battle 140 years later. The book is concise, sprightly, and full of personality-both McPherson's and the participants' in the conflict. A prologue and epilogue flank the three chapters on the battle (each covering one day), relating why it happened and what followed. The author walks readers through Gettysburg from beginning to end, telling a story of simple personal decisions that had a global impact. The importance of the battle is elucidated in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. When readers have finished this book, the only way they can know Gettysburg better is by going there.-Hugh McAloon, formerly at Prince William County Public Library, VA

Kirkus Reviews

Celebrated Civil War historian McPherson (Fields of Fury, 2002, etc.) holds our hands, points our heads, and evokes awe-ful and sanguinary images of July 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Like many other entries in the Crown Journeys series, the text is brief, lucid, and learned. McPherson (History/Princeton) begins with an allusion to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and ends with its full text. An unabashed champion of the site's importance--"More than any other place in the United States," he declares, "this battlefield is indeed hallowed ground"--the author knows this ground intimately and has conducted uncountable tours there. He educates, even inspires with fluid ease. We learn along our vicarious walk that the battlefield comprises some ten square miles, that the town was only 75 miles north of the nation's capital and had a population of roughly 2,400 in 1863, that some 4,000 acres now comprise the park. We learn as well that the total number of American casualties there over three days (50,000 or so) is tenfold the number on D-day. McPherson devotes a chapter to each of the battle's three days, beginning with the first shot on July 1 and ending with Lee's escape. (The author reminds us that nearly two years of fighting remained after Gettysburg.) McPherson's unsurpassed scholarship enables him to debunk many myths: blue and gray did not share Spangler's Spring, he states, and there was probably not a huge supply of shoes in town to attract the footsore Confederates. Like other military historians, he is sometimes romantic, honoring rather than analyzing, and he needs to re-check the meaning of Gertrude's line to Hamlet about a protesting lady. More often, though, he frames his soundinsights in perfect sentences, writing about one prevaricating memoirist, for example, "His sword was mightier than his pen--or at least more truthful." A leisurely walk through a former inferno with a most eloquent Virgil. (4 maps, not seen)