Five top books on Gettysburg

Gabor Boritt, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, is the author of the forthcoming The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows (Simon & Schuster). He picked five top books about Gettysburg for Opinion Journal.

Number one:

Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears (Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

A first-class writer and splendid historian--a combination to be cherished--gives us the best book on America's most famous battle. Sears smoothly integrates up-to-date scholarship that has enriched our understanding of the battle since Edwin Coddington's "The Gettysburg Campaign" (1968), a classic but one that few can slog their way through. Sears has strong opinions. His Robert E. Lee fails to manage his subordinates well, and George Meade, "unexpectedly and against the odds," thoroughly outgenerals him. Only Civil War buffs will find things to argue about in this gripping account of the military moment that helped save the nation.

Click here to read about Boritt's other picks.

--Marshal Zeringue