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.