THE LONG ROAD TO GETTYSBURY

ISBN: 0395559650 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0618051570 (paperback)
Clarion/Houghton Mifflin
Age: 9 and up
Non-fiction

• Golden Kite Award
• ALA Best Book for Young Adults
• ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice
• SLJ Best Book of the Year
• A Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

Abraham Lincoln’s 240-word Gettysburg Address concluded one of the bloodiest and most dramatic battles of the Civil War. Opening and closing with the battlefield dedication ceremony in which President Lincoln was tentatively invited to give "a few appropriate remarks" (quoted in full), The Long Road to Gettysburg explores the battle from two vantage points -- through the eyes of two actual participants, John Dooley, age 18, a Confederate Lieutenant, and Thomas Galway, 15, a Union soldier.

Their words, seamlessly woven with Murphy's compelling text, coupled with photographs, line drawings, engravings and maps provide a real life soldier’s-eye-view of the anxieties of battle preparation, the hardships of battle, the long days of fighting and the sorrowful task of treating the wounded and burying the dead. No reader’s picture of the Civil War will be the same after reading this book.

Booklist (starred): "The firsthand accounts from [the two participants’] writings give the narrative immediacy and personalize the horrors of battle."

SLJ (starred): "Murphy does not spare the grim details of battle. The excellent use of quotes and descriptions from Dooley's and Galway’s journals brings authenticity and immediacy to the battle."

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