The Last Full Measure (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Michael Shaara reinvented the war novel with his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Jeff Shaara continued his father’s legacy with a series of centuries-spanning New York Times bestsellers. This volume assembles three Civil War novels from America’s first family of military fiction: Gods and Generals, The Killer Angels, and The Last Full Measure.

 

Gods and Generals traces the lives, passions, and careers of the great military leaders—Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Winfield Scott Hancock, Joshua Chamberlain—from the gathering clouds of war. The Killer Angels re-creates the fight for America’s destiny in the Battle of Gettysburg, the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history. And The Last Full Measure brings to life the final two years of the Civil War, chasing the escalating conflict between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant—complicated, heroic, and deeply troubled men—through to its riveting conclusion at Appomattox.

 

Praise for Michael Shaara and Jeff Shaara’s Civil War trilogy

 

“Brilliant does not even begin to describe the Shaara gift.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

“Shaara’s beautifully sensitive novel delves deeply in the empathetic realm of psycho-history, where enemies do not exist—just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield.”—San Francisco Chronicle, on Gods and Generals

 

“Remarkable . . . a book that changed my life . . . I had never visited Gettysburg, knew almost nothing about that battle before I read the book, but here it all came alive.”—Ken Burns, on The Killer Angels

 

“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

"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

"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." Mark A. Bradley, The Washington Post Book World

"A worthy companion to its 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

"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." Publishers Weekly

"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

"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." Kirkus Reviews

"A work of maturity and courage....Jeff Shaara is no longer standing in the shadow of the father but shoulder-to-shoulder with him." Orlando Sentinel

In the Pulitzer prize–winning classic The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara created the finest Civil War novel of our time. The Last Full Measure tells the epic story of the events following the Battle of Gettysburg and brings to life the final two years of the Civil War. Jeff Shaara dramatizes the escalating confrontation between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant—complicated, heroic, and deeply troubled men. For Lee and his Confederate forces, Gettysburg has been an unspeakable disaster, but he is determined to fight to the bitter end; he faces Grant, the decisive, hard-nosed leader the Union army so desperately needs in order to turn the tide of the war. From the costly Battle of the Wilderness to the agonizing seize of Petersburg to Lee’s epoch-making surrender at Appomattox, Shaara portrays the riveting conclusion of the Civil War through the minds and hearts of the individuals who gave their last full measure.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS

by

MICHAEL SHAARA and JEFF SHAARA

 

THE CIVIL WAR TRILOGY

GODS AND GENERALS

THE KILLER ANGELS

THE LAST FULL MEASURE

“Brilliant does not even begin to describe the Shaara gift.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jeff Shaara was born in 1952 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University in 1974. For many years he was a dealer in rare coins, but sold his Tampa, Florida, business in 1988 upon the death of his father, Michael Shaara.

As manager of his father's estate, Jeff developed a friendship with film director Ron Maxwell, whose film Gettysburg was based on The Killer Angels. It was Maxwell who suggested that Jeff continue the story Michael Shaara had begun.

He and his wife, Lynne, divide their time between Tampa, Florida, and Missoula, Montana.