Writing a book on Gettysburg should, by now, be more than the excercise of putting the facts together in the correct order and sprinkling on commentary. That has been done more times than I can count. Unfortunately that is what Sears gives us. So in the face of superior books, especially Coddington's book, it is difficult to recommend this one. Once again, Sears puts forth a lopsided argument against those generals he's decided to dislike and for those whom he admires. This was the case in his books on the Seven Days and Antietam that are almost shrill in their attacks on McClellan and his book on Chancellorsville which excused Hooker because he may have had a concussion. What keeps Civil War books fresh is the commentary by their authors, but Sears style has always been too unilateral for my taste. He seems to use his arguments to support the battle and not the other way around.