8 /10 1 Votes8
4/5 AbeBooks Publication date June 12, 2003 OCLC 51559226 Country United States of America | 4/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 384 (1st edition) Originally published 12 June 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISBN 978-0-312-30935-0 (1st edition) Similar Newt Gingrich books, Alternate history books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War is an alternate history novel written by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen. It was published in 2003 and became a New York Times bestseller. It is the first part in a trilogy in which the next books are respectively Grant Comes East and Never Call Retreat.
Contents
Plot summary
The story takes place in 1863 when Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia are victorious at the Battle of Gettysburg instead of the United States. (Instead of attacking the Union line on July 2, 1863, Lee conducts a broad turning movement and forces the Army of the Potomac to attack him in a favorable position.) Gettysburg becomes something of a footnote in the main battle, which takes place at Union Mills in Maryland. The defeat at Union Mills is a grave setback to the United States, but it by no means spells the end of the war or determines its outcome, and the United States still has a lot of fight in it.
In this, the book takes an opposing view to the classic Bring the Jubilee published in 1953 - precisely fifty years before the present book - which assumes that a defeat in Gettysburg would have led to a complete defeat and catastrophic collapse of the North.