This week marks the 150th anniversary of the surrender of Confederate forces, bringing four bloody years of civil war to a close. The impacts of that conflict have echoed down through the decades. And the deep sectarian rifts it exposed and even widened continue to manifest in the electoral stalemate between red and blue states, and the ongoing “culture wars” that divide this country. Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the Civil War, The Killer Angels, is a masterpiece of historical fiction and a portrait of our nation (for it is one) that will always be relevant.

You can purchase the book here.