SOURCE: "How Civil War Generals Thought and Fought," in Christian Science Monitor, June 18, 1998, p. B7.

[In the following review, Keith Henderson, though pointing to some possible historical and stylistic oddities in The Last Full Measure, praises Shaara's artful blending of "novelistic license with a deep reverence for history."]

Americans may never stop peering back in wonder at their Civil War. How did the young country survive that terrible conflict? What did the men who shaped the conflict think as they led tens of thousands of their countrymen toward the carnage of the world's first modern war, with rifled guns, exploding shells, and rail transport vastly raising the toll in human lives?

Jeff Shaara's new novel tries to get at that last question. It's the final installment in a series of historical fiction begun by Shaara's father, Michael, with his bestseller about Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. An earlier volume...