JoAnna McDonald. The World Will Long Remember: A Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg. Shippensburg, Penn.: White Mane Publishing, 1996. vii + 183 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57249-000-0.
Reviewed by Daniel E. Sutherland (Department of History, University of Arkansas)
Published on H-CivWar (July, 1997)
This is a deluxe tour guide of the Gettysburg battlefield, in the mode of the U.S. Army War College series. In fact, Ms. McDonald was a student of Jay Luvaas, the chief contributor to that series. There are twenty-four stops in the tour, beginning with McPherson's Ridge and ending at the National Cemetery. And the book has some attractive features. It includes brief (and fairly elementary) essays on strategy, tactics, weapons, equippage, and the "psychological character" of the armies and their soldiers. The narrative section that accompanies each tour stop is replete with photographs, detailed tactical maps, and excerpts from the Official Records that describe the combat action. Appendices provide the orders of battle for both armies.
But unlike the War College series, this is more picture book than tour guide. The text is overwhelmed by the maps and photographs, most of the latter being portraits of participants in the battle. Its 11x8 format makes it less handy than the 8x5 War College guides, and it is not nearly so authoritative as the Luvaas-Harold Nelson guide to this same battle.
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Citation:
Daniel E. Sutherland. Review of McDonald, JoAnna, The World Will Long Remember: A Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg.
H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews.
July, 1997.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1092
Copyright © 1997 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.