I have read this book 3 times at this point in my life— generally I review it whenever I’ve volunteered to give friends an informal tour of the battlefield. The book is easy enough to read, with a conversational tone that makes its content easily digestible and yet still thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to anyone about to visit Gettysburg to contextualize those events that made this little Pennsylvanian town so memorable.

I first saw this in hard copy on the shelves at Gettysburg during the summer of 2016, however they only had one copy and it wasn't for sale. As soon as it popped up as a Kindle special this September, I jumped on it.

A quick one day read as McPherson takes the reader on a journey with one of his many student groups through the grounds of Gettysburg. Rather than an overall narrative, or travel journey, McPherson follows the battlefield through the battles of July 1-3, 1863 with stops at each memorial, monument or cannon that tells a story or myth of the three days of fighting. I have a decent knowledge of the Civil War, but learned a lot in this short book -especially the myths he debunked and the positions of the various regiments. In hindsight, I should have read this while at Gettysburg as I now want to go back-both to read this as I walk and to better understand some of the places I didn't catch in my two visits. I'm also curious to see what has changed in the intervening thirteen years especially with regard to restoration of the Battlefield back to its 1863 conditions with respect to tree and ground cover.

Although McPherson is a historian and prolific writer on the Civil War, this book isn't dry at all. You felt some of his students' tears as they followed the paths of the men who fought and died there as well as those who lived and whose stories shaped the history of the War as we know it. That includes the myths - both those around the Battlefield itself such as whether the hooves on the ground in the equestrian memorials indicated whether the men were wounded, died or neither - and those that formed during Reconstruction as a means to show healing.

Hallowed Ground indeed, and this book does it justice.

Was recommended this book by a friend who said it was one of the most interesting books he had ever read on the battle of Gettysburg (he's a HUGE Civil War buff). I'm not a Civil War buff but this was really a great book. Makes me want to go tour Gettysburg!

Really great overview of the battle. I'll definitely be reading more by this author

McPherson's approach is accessible and allows the reader to share his acute familiarity, even if they're not a Pulitzer prize-winning, history professor at Princeton. The story is told in three parts, detailing each day of the battle on a walk through the now National Park.

Rather than an in-depth account of the battle at Gettysburg, this books provides a tour of the grounds with battle stories and anecdotes along the way. Not having been to Gettysburg, the detailed directions from one historic site to another were a little excessive for me, but I appreciated the readability of the fairly short book. It gave me an overview of the battle with interesting tidbits and left me feeling like I understood the essential facts without being bogged down by details.