This sympathy between the two men grows as Lee observes Scott embroiled in the distracting politics of war: officers salivating for promotion, enemies more preoccupied with saving face than lives, distant legislators issuing directives. Lee, too, frequently assesses his place in the hierarchy, but he-like Scott-remains more bemused than seduced by the glitter of fame. "The worst thing you can do is win badly." Lee distinguishes himself throughout the campaign, his meticulous scouting and shrewd inferences winning both Scott's admiration and the jealousy of officers whose ambition surpasses their experience. "The worst consequence of fighting a war is not if you lose, Mr. troops slowly and inevitably toward Mexico City, imparting martial lessons along the way.
Headstrong, brilliant, and generally distrustful of his less able subordinates, Scott leads the U.S. The veteran major-general Winfield Scott and an upstart Robert E. Shaara's hallmarks-the deliberations of leaders and the brutal facts of battle-illuminate his engaging diversion into an oft-overlooked struggle in which men who would come to oppose one another fought under a single flag. Although it secured the Southwest for a nation emboldened by Manifest Destiny, this two-year conflict has nearly faded into oblivion, eclipsed by the subsequent domestic dispute a dozen years later. Having chronicled the Civil War in Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, Jeff Shaara casts his eye on the earlier proving ground of the Mexican War in his third novel, Gone for Soldiers.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. "SHAARA, AS USUAL, IS AT HIS BEST IN ACTION AND CONFRONTATION AND IN EVOKING HOW IT FELT TO BE THERE." has humanized the mythos of Lee as no one ever has and, in doing, makes an enduring contribution to literature." forces to Mexico City, building suspense at each battle, all towards the climactic storming of the gates of the capital. The salvaging of such episodes from history is ultimately a patriotic task, deserving of gratitude." Stonewall Jackson shows up as a humorless young lieutenant with a spiritual reverence for his artillery, and Ulysses S. Most poignant of all is the appearance of so many characters who will fight under opposing flags 13 years later. SHAARA RELIES "ON THE HISTORY BEHIND THE MEN AND THEIR CAMPAIGNS TO TELL THE TALE. "BRILLIANT DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE SHAARA GIFT." In this stunning, unforgettable novel, Jeff Shaara carries us back thirteen years before the Civil War, when that momentous conflict's most familiar names are fighting for another cause, junior officers marching under the same flag in an unfamiliar land, experiencing combat for the first time in the Mexican-American War.
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