Grab Gone For Soldiers Edited By Jeff Shaara Digital

USA!!! USA!! I doubt if there has been as one sided account of the Mexican War since theth Century, There is absolutely no look at at the country of Mexico, Mexican culture, what was going on with leadership, how the Mexican army was assembled, how Mexico saw the warnothing.
The only look at the Mexican side was his completely dismissive presentation of Santa Anna, reducing him to a vain glorious buffoon and a cartoon character.
A man had to have more to him than that to have returned again a again to leadership, But there was no insight into Mexican politics and history, It's all, "they're the bad guys, let's go get them for the glory of America!" He is so blind to Mexico that he never even mentions the Niños Heros, even though every city in Mexico has a street named after

them.
It would give some insight into the Mexican people,

This author is so verbose you could cut a full third of this book and never miss a thing, In particular his endless creations of the inner thoughts of Scott and Lee is tedious and self congratulatory.
All unnecessary. And incidentally who knew the Robert E Lee practically single handedly won the Mexican War

And any look at how this war served the same purpose as the Spanish Civil War served for the Nazis, a practice exercise for training the future army No.


By presenting real insight into both sides of the struggle this book could have had a real impact instead of just being a jingoistic glorification of the American Military.
It left the field the same as our soldiers leaving no thought to what went on in Mexico following the withdrawal, Surely this is elemental to finishing the history of the conflict,

Hoping for some real knowledge of this was I was more than sadly given only a single focused broadsheet story shallow and empty.
Read this because of interest in Mexican history, This is a very specific story about the military actions that won the U, S. Mexican war starting with the naval siege at Vera Cruz and through the taking of Mexico City and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, It is very interesting and wellwritten, Many of the men in the story later became famous figures on both sides of the U, S. Civil War. Does give some insight into the Mexican experience but mostly focuses on the American military figures involved, Fascinating detail, especially keen on an inside look at a very young, but already brilliant Captain Robert E, Lee.

Shaara'shistoric novel about the MexicanAmerican War is a fascinating book by itself and can also be seen as a precursor to Shaara's later work on the American Civil War.


Providing a depth of characterization that will be worthwhile to readers and students of this era in American history, the reader gets to know about many historical personages, most notably Lee and General Winfield Scott.


Haven't been able to catch Jeff's frequency, . . not a fan with exception of Gone for Soldiers,
Appreciated his interpretation. It combined well with Zollinger's Chapultepec,
sitelink goodreads. com/book/show/
I have recently read other books about the Mexican War, I was interested in this one because it focuses on the many U, S. military leaders in this war that became famous in the Civil War, fighting on both sides and therefore against each other in the Civil War.
It added many details about the actual battles than were covered by the other books I read, This story follows Winthrop Scott as he leads the U, S. Army from Vera Cruz to Mexico City and describes the successes and failures as the Army marches on, That writing was interesting and informative unfortunately, there was more,

The other writing is painfully boring in places, For instance, Lee must hide for most of the day at a water hole when he was scouting for the Army, Page after page after page after page after page bored yet, Shaara takes us into Lees mind as he thinks about the most boring parts of his life and describes in minute detail how his legs are beginning to get numb, and what his dreams are and on and on about stuff that was so boring, I forgot it as soon as my eyes moved to the next boring thing.
That was the longest day in the history of the United States, maybe the world, And I read it all, just in case something important might be buried in it, That was the worst, but not the only example by a long shot, It was so grotesque that I marked the book from five to three,
Started:finished:My introduction to Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prizewinning"Killer Angels" was late in coming after years of seeking out National Military Parks, acquiring maps, walking the barelyvisible, handdug revetments and studying the strategic scenarios in whose deliberation so much epic, bloody conflict took place.
Sharra passed away tragically at the young age of, but his son, Jeff, continued his legacy rounding out what would become their famous fatherandson trilogy.
Jeff Shaara's "Gods and Generals" covers the period leading up to Gettysburg as told by his father in "Killer Angels" and "The Last Full Measure" covers the following engagements up until the siege of Petersburg, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's failed breakout to rejoin forces and its final surrender by Robert E.
Lee to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. It would be the only other time they'd meet since fighting together and defeating Santa Anna's Mexican army nearly two decades before, Having read the trilogy, "Gone for Soldiers" is yet another masterpiece of military historical fiction by Jeff Shaara that documents the littleknown and muchforgotten MexicanAmerican War from.
Critics of the time, in Europe and in Washington, who were against the Democratic Party's fervor for expansionism called it a "Bully's War" and, indeed, given the repeated successes in battle after battle by the American Army, the impression of unmatched military superiority, however apparent, would be deeply mistaken.
Shaara delves methodically into the mostobscure elements of strategic conflict not the least of which includes political infighting between embattled commanders in an unholy heirarchy of egos, among them, supremely so, the President's.
Particularly, the criticality of failure for these players had the outcome of key uncertain battles been otherwise, MajorGeneral Winfield Scott's army was outnumbered by more than threetoone was geographically disadvantaged not being afforded the high ground and having to take heavily fortified defensive positions and, moreover, was cutoff from resupply by sea from landings at Vera Cruz.
Each subsequent battle, then, in the march to take Mexico City, became a critical chokepoint that potentially undermined President James K, Polk's unpopular prosecution of The Monroe Doctrine and the Republic's claim to Manifest Destiny, Had the army failed, plagued with illness, desertion and volunteers by the thousands mustering out, the geopolitical ramifications would have been enormous, including contraction of disputed territorial borders and the possible impeachment of Polk himself.
More than just the strategic paradigm of marshalling assets and seizing every opportunity to outflank an enemy in superior force, Shaara understands, best, the dynamic mindset of leadership where character faults and conflicts between personalitytypes and ego become manifest obstaclesespecially threatening to undo an effective chain of command.
As such, there are agendas, lines being drawn and crossed, trivial scores to be settled, and grudges that will endure because of selfpromotional ambitions for political office in the future competitively at odds with one another.
The pure soldier, of which there are few, is held up by example to be one that does what he is told, seeking not glory, but rather the unheralded selfsatisfaction that he's successfully done his duty.
Robert E. Lee, ayearold lieutenant in the Engineer Corps and graduate from West Point, even more with his constant reckoning with God, best exemplifies this measure and earns, therefore, the rarest respect by his old school commanding general whose strictest and curmudgeonly leadership, makes Lee and Scott the key protagonists of the story.
And so it is. A worthwhile read to be sure, Of a war worthy of remembrance, and a time that would be eclipsedyears later when many who served as comrades in arms in Mexico would meet each other, mostterribly again, at opposite ends of cannon, rifle and bayonet.
The MexicanAmerican War.

A dispute over which river was the border resolved by the United States making it the Pacific Ocean, Gone for Soldiers is a campaign diary of all the people Shaara thought were the good guys, Maybe they removed Indians via the Trail of Tears, Maybe they were slaveholders. No matter, because didnt men like Winfield Scott and Robert E Lee look goddamn good in army blue,

Good ol boys

Gone for Soldiers takes a perspective that the professional soldier class that would make up the higher echelons of the Confederate States army were morally indistinguishable from the Unionists such as Scott or Grant.
Lee, Johnston, Jackson, Longstreet, Beauregard, Pickett are heroic dutybound soldiers, while slimy politicians in Washington deny the United States army essential support,

Characterisation isnt about creating people that appeal to me, Nor does Shaara have to hold slavishly to history in his portrayals, But the characters are pretty interchangeable as slightly different shades of “our boys in blue”, Theres no appeal to a wider context and you can sense the stirrings of the “Lost Cause” in the depictions of the future Confederates,

Shaaras one concession to a different viewpoint, the Mexican leader Santa Anna, is that of a moustache twirling villain, Shaaras caricature of Santa Annas ironically draws attention to the shallowness of the rendering of the protagonists,

Shaara also leans heavily on the contrasts between the free United States and the dictatorial minded Mexico, Sure, you can take that viewpoint, and I dont doubt a number of Americans at the time did, But writing unironically:

Mexico has difficulty governing itself in the best of times,

when the US Civil War is due withinyears of the events of the book with plenty of nigh ungovernable tension well before then is, frankly, taking the piss.
A historical novel can change events, Shaara changes the historical account of the hanging of Irish Catholic deserters to better fit the theme of duty which, in itself, is fine, But Gone for Soldiers is very very narrow in its theme, in that being a troop is good and makes you a good person.


Show, Dont Tell

Gone for Soldiers isnt terribly written, Shaara knows the old tricks, such as Scott crediting his subordinate Twigg for not being so stupid to launch a frontal assault when that was exactly what Twigg planned to do.
Lees discomfort lying for hours under a tree trunk is another good scene, Theres an intelligent structure to the book, where each battle is a tactical problem to be unpicked with brains and courage and a clear buildup of stakes.


However, Gone for Soldiers leans heavily, way too heavily, on internal monologue, Its line after line pregnant with analysis:

He looked at the hot glow of the copper ball, thought, God is here! God is watching! That one was meant for me!

In isolation, perhaps not so bad, but wading through a book of it feels like the monkeys paw of being granted the ability to read minds.
It is also pretty tensionless stuff, leading me to query whether you can describe the characters as “richly drawn, ” Writing adifferent variations on the theme of duty is still one theme,

When Shaara ventures into a third person descriptions, it varies between dull and disastrous, Shaara glitches out on purple prose trying to describe an attack on US supply carts during an armistice, I didnt have a clue as to what happened until Shaara told me by way of dialogue after,

The dialogue varies in quality, The aforementioned exchange between Scott and Twigg is good, The first meeting between Scott and the lawyer Nicholas Trist is not, as each party trips over the exposition they have to deliver, The final exchange between Scott and Lee is Shaara furiously and cringeworthily paddling them away from associations with territorial aggrandizement,

When reading Gone for Soldiers, I wondered how you could turn a book about incredibly insular people with no chat into a movie.
As I later found out, another one of Shaaras has been Gods and Generals, There is a cut that runs for over four hours, It rates at abouton Rotten Tomatoes,

Gone for Soldiers isnt anbook, I even wavered a promoting it to three, But it doesnt offer anything special, Instead its a competently written paint by numbers, if each character was telling you what number they were painting and how they felt about it.

.