[In the following review, Taylor is impressed with The Last Full Measure's characterization of the Civil War's great military leaders.]

Shaara capitalized on his father Michael's hugely popular Civil War novel The Killer Angels (1974) by writing a prequel (Gods and Generals, 1996). A sequel [The Last Full Measure] was natural since Gods was a best-seller for a few months. It resumes with Lee's retreat from Gettysburg and continues to his surrender at Appomattox. Perhaps the feature that makes the Shaaras so popular is their credible re-creation of the interior dialogue and attitudes of the Civil War's famous military figures; here, they are Lee, James Longstreet, Grant, and Joshua Chamberlain. The point is exemplified in Shaara's characterizations of the pressures in his leaders' lives: Lee expresses his frustrations about the course and length of the war within a fatalistic, thy-will-be-done religiosity, and Grant expresses his by bemoaning the incompetence of his officers. This aspect of the novel is supported by the texture of his battle scenes, rendered loudly, muddily, and bloodily. That's a captivating combination even for (especially for?) those Civil War-roundtable types who can talk an ear off about every regiment and all their equipage used at the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Crater, Five Forks … With massive publicity in store, biblio-quartermasters should stockpile accordingly.