On great fields the life and unlikely heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North...

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Main Author: White, Ronald C. 1939- (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Random House, [2023]
Edition: First edition.
Subjects:
Summary: "Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North's greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg--and told by two surgeons he would die--Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College. How did a stuttering young boy come to be fluent in nine languages and even teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? Award-winning historian Ronald C. White delves into these contradictions in this definitive, cradle-to-death biography of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, from his upbringing in rural Maine to his tenacious, empathetic military leadership and his influential post-war public service, exploring a question that still plagues so many veterans: How do you make a civilian life of meaning after having experienced the extreme highs and lows of war?"--
Physical Description: xix, 483 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 9780525510086
0525510087
Author Notes: Ronald C. White is the New York Times bestselling author of biographies A. Lincoln and American Ulysses , as well as three other books on Lincoln, most recently Lincoln in Private. White earned his PhD at Princeton, has lectured at the White House, and has spoken about Lincoln across the world. He is a senior fellow of The Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C.