Killer Angels

The Killer Angels

Michael Shaara, the author of The Killer Angels, was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1928. During a visit to Gettysburg, he saw the battlefield and learned about the battle and its significance. He returned home with an idea to write a historical novel based on the battle. The Killer Angels was published in 1974 and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1975. The novel was made into a movie in 1993 called Gettysburg. It starred Martin Sheen and Jeff Daniels. After the movie was released, the novel shot to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Since then, Shaara's son Jeff has written two more Civil War novels that detail the events preceding and following his father's book.
According to Dictionary.com a historical novel is “A novel that re-creates a period or event in history and often uses historical figures as some of its characters.” With that said, one would tend to think that a historical account of Gettysburg would be muc...