Author Jeff Shaara rounds out the Civil War trilogy started by his late father Michael Shaara, whose book The Killer Angels describes the Battle of Gettysburg. Just as Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals covers action prior to Gettysburg, The Last Full Measure picks up with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania and continues through the end of the war. Shaara focuses on the characters of Lee and Union commander Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, both of whom play prominent roles in the earlier books. He also introduces a new one: Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who would finally defeat the South--something no soldier before him could manage. The Last Full Measure is often exciting and poignant, and fans of The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals won't be disappointed.


From Publishers Weekly
Concluding the Civil War trilogy that began with his father Michael's Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels, Shaara (Gods and Generals) chronicles Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and his valiant efforts to defend northern Virginia from Grant's superior, better-supplied forces. Seen alternately through the eyes of Lee, Grant and Maine abolitionist Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the narrative begins with the successful Union ambush at Bristoe Station in October 1863. It then details Lee's 18-month cat-and-mouse game as he outmaneuvers Grant, despite overwhelming odds and terrible deprivation, concludes with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Impressively researched, this deeply affecting work can't be faulted for inaccuracy or lack of detail. But the occasionally coarse grain of Shaara's characterizations is a problem. Haunted by Stonewall Jackson's ghost, 56-year-old Lee frequently appears to be a semisenile neurotic. Grant, more concerned about his supply of cigars than battle losses, comes across as a dolt. This tendency toward caricature notwithstanding, Shaara has produced a stirring epigraph to his father's remarkable novel. Major ad/promo; first serial to Civil War Times Illustrated; BOMC and QPB alternates; author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The late Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (LJ 9/1/74), about the Battle of Gettysburg, is a classic Civil War novel. His son Jeff has written two novels that bracket it and complete a trilogy about the Civil War in the East. In his Gods and Generals (LJ 3/15/95), Shaara followed the fortunes of several men destined to fight one another in the great battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, and in this book he writes about the course of the war in Virginia from Lee's retreat from Gettysburg to his surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ulysses S. Grant has come East to assume command of all Federal forces and to confront Lee, and the war they make is marked by such horrendous battles as The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. As characters, Grant and Lee dominate this book, overshadowing such other historical figures as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Gordon. Civil War buffs will find Shaara nodding on some small details, but they generally will be delighted with this book. More general readers, however, may find it lacks the dramatic intensity of his father's riveting novel. While not ranking with the very best Civil War fiction, it does take its place along side such fine ones as William Safire's Freedom (Doubleday, 1987).-ACharles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Washington Post Book World, Mark A. Bradley
If the true test of a work on the Civil War is to add something new to the established canon, Jeff Shaara's The Last Full Measure is a failure.... Although it is billed as a novel written by a storyteller and not a historian, it straddles that hazy no man's land between fact and fiction--a dangerous zone for any author who insists on using real characters and actual events already much written about and enshrined in some very good biographies and histories.


From AudioFile
The vision of Michael Shaara's trilogy about the Civil War is completed here by his son. After the Battle of Gettysburg, detailed in The Killer Angels, the generals on both sides still had many bloody battles to fight before the surrender at Appomattox. Following the style of the earlier volumes, the scenes alternate between the Northern and Southern camps, often recounting overlapping time periods. The abridgment has no ordering elements, such as chapter breaks, and it is occasionally unclear which side he's discussing. Stephen Lang presents a very grand view of the action and the characters. The intensity in his portrayal best suits the narrative when he's describing a battle. The subtle reflections of the characters are overshadowed as they are all swept up in the grandeur and pathos. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Shaara capitalized on his father Michael's hugely popular Civil War novel The Killer Angels (1974) by writing a prequel (Gods and Generals, 1996). A sequel was natural since Gods was a best-seller for a few months. It resumes with Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and continues to his surrender at Appomattox. Perhaps the feature that makes the Shaaras so popular is their credible re-creation of the interior dialogue and attitudes of the Civil War's famous military figures; here, they are Lee, James Longstreet, Grant, and Joshua Chamberlain. The point is exemplified in Shaara's characterizations of the pressures in his leaders' lives: Lee expresses his frustrations about the course and length of the war within a fatalistic, thy-will-be-done religiosity, and Grant expresses his by bemoaning the incompetence of his officers. This aspect of the novel is supported by the texture of his battle scenes, rendered loudly, muddily, and bloodily. That's a captivating combination even for (especially for?) those Civil War^-roundtable types who can talk an ear off about every regiment and all their equipage used at the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Crater, Five Forks . . . With massive publicity in store, biblio-quartermasters should stockpile accordingly. Gilbert Taylor


From Kirkus Reviews
Concluding volume of the Shaara family's lightly fictionalized chronicle of the Civil War, one of the more unusual (and successful) recent projects in publishing. Michael Shaara (who died in 1998) wrote the Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels (1974), a novel that dealt with the pivotal three-day battle of Gettysburg, and matched a shrewd reading of character to careful research. In 1996, Shaara's son issued Gods and Generals, a fictional treatment of the war's early years. This new story traces the war's sad progress from a few days after Lee's retreat from Gettysburg until his surrender, in 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse. While The Killer Angels used the war to probe basic issues of human nature, the more recent works in the series are more focused on catching the war's day-to-day reality, which they do quite successfully. Both focus largely on the experiences and reflections of a group of officers, Union and Confederate, at the center of the fighting. This time out, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are principal characters, and Shaara is careful to hew closely to the historical record in describing their moods, thoughts, and actions. Through their eyes, and the eyes of a half a dozen other figures, we follow the bloody campaigns in the Wilderness, the siege of Petersburg, the collapse of Southern resistance, and the surrender of Lee's army, in a scene rendered with great precision and vigor. Shaara's battle episodes nicely balance an admirable grasp of strategy with an understanding of the war's horror and cost. While it's hard to see how the younger Shaara's books offer anything new as either fiction or history on the subject, their swift pace and great accuracy do make for a vivid--and sometimes moving -- review of a defining moment in American history. (First serial to Civil War Times Illustrated; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Riveting . . . Vivid . . . Brilliantly depicted. . . . THE LAST FULL MEASURE IS MORE THAN ANOTHER HISTORICAL NOVEL. It is rooted in history, but its strength is the element of humanity flowing through its characters. . . . The book is compelling, easy to read, well researched and written, and thought-provoking. . . . In short, it is everything that a reader could ask for."
--Chicago Tribune

"A WORTHY COMPANION TO ITS TWO PREDECESSORS . . . These characters come alive as complex, heroic, and flawed men. . . . You are with [Robert E.] Lee, a deeply religious man, as he first begins to wonder if the Confederate cause will prevail. . . . You ride with [Ulysses S.] Grant to see the mounds of Union dead at Cold Harbor, and you share his sickening realization that thousands are dead because of his miscalculation. . . . You are at [Joshua] Chamberlain's bedside as he fights to recover from nearly mortal wounds. . . . Each book is masterful in its own way and taken together, they are unmatched in the body of Civil War literature."
--The Baltimore Sun

"AN AMBITIOUS WORK . . . [Shaara] writes with considerable sensitivity and skill, setting vivid scenes and adding drama and suspense to a familiar tale."
--The Seattle Times

"Exhaustively researched, infused with a profound understanding of the great issues of a nation and the small quirks of the human heart and ego, The Last Full Measure is fiction that brings history brilliantly to life."
--Newsday


Review
"Riveting . . . Vivid . . . Brilliantly depicted. . . . THE LAST FULL MEASURE IS MORE THAN ANOTHER HISTORICAL NOVEL. It is rooted in history, but its strength is the element of humanity flowing through its characters. . . . The book is compelling, easy to read, well researched and written, and thought-provoking. . . . In short, it is everything that a reader could ask for."
--Chicago Tribune

"A WORTHY COMPANION TO ITS TWO PREDECESSORS . . . These characters come alive as complex, heroic, and flawed men. . . . You are with [Robert E.] Lee, a deeply religious man, as he first begins to wonder if the Confederate cause will prevail. . . . You ride with [Ulysses S.] Grant to see the mounds of Union dead at Cold Harbor, and you share his sickening realization that thousands are dead because of his miscalculation. . . . You are at [Joshua] Chamberlain's bedside as he fights to recover from nearly mortal wounds. . . . Each book is masterful in its own way and taken together, they are unmatched in the body of Civil War literature."
--The Baltimore Sun

"AN AMBITIOUS WORK . . . [Shaara] writes with considerable sensitivity and skill, setting vivid scenes and adding drama and suspense to a familiar tale."
--The Seattle Times

"Exhaustively researched, infused with a profound understanding of the great issues of a nation and the small quirks of the human heart and ego, The Last Full Measure is fiction that brings history brilliantly to life."
--Newsday

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As The Last Full Measure opens, Gettysburg is past and the war advances to its third brutal year. On the Union side, the gulf between the politicians in Washington and the generals in the field yawns ever wider. Never has the cumbersome Union Army so desperately needed a decisive, hard-nosed leader. It is at this critical moment that Lincoln places Ulysses S. Grant in command -- and turns the tide of the war. For Robert E. Lee, Gettysburg was an unspeakable disaster -- compounded by the shattering loss of the fiery Stonewall Jackson two months before. Lee knows better than anyone that the South cannot survive a war of attrition. But with the total devotion of his generals -- Longstreet, Hill, Stuart -- and his unswerving faith in God, Lee is determined to fight to the bitter end. Battle by staggering battle, Shaara dramatizes the escalating confrontation between Lee and Grant -- complicated, heroic, deeply troubled men.

SYNOPSIS

In the Pulitzer prize-winning classic The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara created the finest Civil War novel of our time, an enduring bestseller that has sold more than two million copies.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chicago Tribune

The Last Full Measure is everything that a reader could ask for.

Publishers Weekly

Concluding the Civil War trilogy that began with his father Michael's Pulitzer-winning The Killer Angels, Shaara (Gods and Generals) chronicles Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and his valiant efforts to defend northern Virginia from Grant's superior, better-supplied forces. Seen alternately through the eyes of Lee, Grant and Maine abolitionist Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the narrative begins with the successful Union ambush at Bristoe Station in October 1863. It then details Lee's 18-month cat-and-mouse game as he outmaneuvers Grant, despite overwhelming odds and terrible deprivation, concludes with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Impressively researched, this deeply affecting work can't be faulted for inaccuracy or lack of detail. But the occasionally coarse grain of Shaara's characterizations is a problem. Haunted by Stonewall Jackson's ghost, 56-year-old Lee frequently appears to be a semi-senile neurotic. Grant, more concerned about his supply of cigars than battle losses, comes across as a dolt. This tendency toward caricature notwithstanding, Shaara has produced a stirring epigraph to his father's remarkable novel.

Library Journal - Charles Michaud

The late Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels), about the Battle of Gettysburg, is a classic Civil War novel. His son Jeff has written two novels that bracket it and complete a trilogy about the Civil War in the East. In his Gods and Generals, Shaara followed the fortunes of several men destined to fight one another in the great battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, and in this book he writes about the course of the war in Virginia from Lee's retreat from Gettysburg to his surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ulysses S. Grant has come East to assume command of all Federal forces and to confront Lee, and the war they make is marked by such horrendous battles as The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. As characters, Grant and Lee dominate this book, overshadowing such other historical figures as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Gordon. Civil War buffs will find Shaara nodding on some small details, but they generally will be delighted with this book. More general readers, however, may find it lacks the dramatic intensity of his father's riveting novel. While not ranking with the very best Civil War fiction, it does take its place along side such fine ones as William Safire's Freedom.

Library Journal - Charles Michaud

The late Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels), about the Battle of Gettysburg, is a classic Civil War novel. His son Jeff has written two novels that bracket it and complete a trilogy about the Civil War in the East. In his Gods and Generals, Shaara followed the fortunes of several men destined to fight one another in the great battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, and in this book he writes about the course of the war in Virginia from Lee's retreat from Gettysburg to his surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ulysses S. Grant has come East to assume command of all Federal forces and to confront Lee, and the war they make is marked by such horrendous battles as The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. As characters, Grant and Lee dominate this book, overshadowing such other historical figures as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Gordon. Civil War buffs will find Shaara nodding on some small details, but they generally will be delighted with this book. More general readers, however, may find it lacks the dramatic intensity of his father's riveting novel. While not ranking with the very best Civil War fiction, it does take its place along side such fine ones as William Safire's Freedom.

AudioFile - Robin F. Whitten