Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #279490 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

Customer Reviews

Fascinating view of a forgotten war
Those who are fans of Jeff Shaara's work, and, indeed, that of his father, Michael, will be delighted by his foray into the Mexican-American War.

I cannot recall any substantial fiction work which covers the War in question, whereas, of course, the American Civil War which followed 13 years afterwards has proved to be a never-ending source for fiction writers.

Shaara's system, as, again, with his father, is to write the story from the point of view of the various main characters, here, Winfield Scott, Robert E Lee and Santa Anna, with a few others thrown in, mainly Thomas Jackson.

Whereas the characters of the Civil War characters are comparatively well-known, it is difficult to know how accurately Shaara (and, admittedly other writers such as Eisenhower) portrays Worth, Twiggs and Pillow. I think that one must presume that all three, for varying reasons, were indeed extremely frustrating subordinates to work with. It perhaps explains Scott's apparent readiness to take the brilliant (and very respectful) Lee into his confidence.

In lesser hands Lee could appear dour, but Shaara makes him a multi-faceted character, yet at the same time ever-mindful of the position of superior-ranking officers in the US Army at the time.

Scott comes across as an extremely subtle commander, which may not have been quite so apparent in other books on the subject, and I was certainly unaware of the (at times) bitter rivalry between him and Zachary Taylor.

The book would have rated 5-stars were it not for the portrayal of Santa Anna. One of the successes of the Civil War books was in obtaining view-points from senior officers of the two armies in contention. With the Mexican War, things are made difficult by the fact that Santa Anna was in supreme command of the Mexican forces, and all of his subordinate generals are very shadowy figures in history. Santa Anna himself is a fascinating historical character, but one who it is extremely difficult to comprehend. What was it about him that made the Mexican people reject him totally on several occasions and yet welcome him back a few years later, and, then, give (or allow) him absolute power?

The picture which Shaara gives is of a petulant character, rather reminiscent of some portrayals of Napoleon or, perhaps Caligula. Perhaps that is the problem with figures who are considerably "larger than life"?

Having said that, the book is, as usual, well written and gives a very well-explained view of the Southern campaigns in a forgotten war.

You learn more about the Mexican War than about Robert E Lee
"Gone for Soldiers," a novel of the Mexican War, has the odd position of being a prequel to a prequel. The son of Michael Shaara the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Killer Angels" which tells the story of the battle of Gettysburg from the perspective of four major participants (Lee and Longstreet for the Confederates, Buford and Chamberlain for the Federals), Jeff Shaara authored both a prequel, "Gods and Generals" and a sequel "The Last Full Measure" to his father's novel. Both volumes maintained a focus on Lee, Longstreet and Chamberlain while working in other familiar figures from the war, most notably Jackson for the prequel and Grant for the sequel. In "Gone for Soldiers" the focus is primarily on Captain Robert E. Lee and his mentor Winfield Scott during the Mexican War.

More than the other two volumes, "Gone for Soldiers" is able to benefit from the shifts in perspective used in "The Killer Angels." Most of the chapters focus on Lee and Scott, although there are a few focusing on the Mexico military dictator Santa Anna and several chapters during the final assault on Mexico City that tell of the exploits of Longstreet, Jackson and Grant--all figures who will become prominent in the main trilogy (the chapter on Grant is the most interesting). Certainly it is difficult to get the most out of this volume if you have not read "The Killer Angels," or at least seen the movie "Gettysburg," although I can not imagine why someone would come to this book except through those other volumes. After all, there are not a lot of novels about the Mexican War out there. But the element of irony underscores many scenes in the book, whether it is Lee briefly meeting Longstreet, Jackson, Pickett, Meade and Grant, or Scott telling his chief engineer about the need to take the high ground. What happened with Picket's Charge at Gettysburg in particular and the Civil War in general colors much of what happens in this novel.

If anything, Shaara's characterization of Lee is still too sanctified; his modest and humility become just to oppressive by the end of the novel. Because one of the point of these books is to gain insight into what these men were thinking, you can make a case that Lee, even more so that Scott, is over-reflective, which makes his combination of military genius and political naivete rather unbelievable. The relationship between Lee and Scott is more important that the war itself; years later Scott went on record as calling Lee the best officer he ever saw and one of the biggest surprises is that the old man does not serve more explicitly as a father figure to Lee, whose father "Light Horse" Harry Lee, the Revolutionary War hero, died when the boy was fairly young. Thus we read the book in anticipation of a relationship developing between the two that simply never comes about. As for Scott, we come away from the novel concerned more with his bickering staff and political headaches more than his military genius, especially since time and time again that boils down to have Captain Lee come up with the plan, or scout the enemy, or place the guns, or command the troops. Most of the supporting characters are presented as inept clowns of various degrees, although Nicholas Trist the diplomat sent by President Polk to negotiate a peace treat is the exception that proves the rule. The main thing you will come away with from reading "Gone for Soldiers" are the details of Scott's campaign during the Mexican War. The book is quite readable except for a few rough spots during the action when the characters insist on thinking too much about what they think about what they are doing. But overall, I still prefer the realism of the fictional Lee of Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" to the figure in this book.