During the crucial three days of combat at Gettysburg, the most nightmarish place on the entire battlefield was appropriately named the Devil's Den. This jumble of huge boulders situated at the southern end of Houck's Ridge was truly a hell on earth during the decisive afternoon of July 2, 1863. The tenacious struggle that raged beyond control at the battle-line's southern end was all-important, because the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge anchored the left flank of the over-extended Union battle-line, before Federal troops occupied Little Round Top to the east. The battle-hardened veterans of Lieutenant General James Longstreet's First Corps captured this vital sector— the first Union left flank—in one of the few Southern successes of the second day, after some of the war's most bitter fighting. Nevertheless, the dramatic story of the successful turning of the first Union left flank has been long overlooked and ignored largely because of the giant historical shadow cast by the more famous struggle at Little Round Top, which was only the second and last fight for the southern flank of both armies on July 2. Therefore, the important contest for possession of the first Union left flank at the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge was crucial on the bloody afternoon that decided the fate of America. • Includes 22 colour and sepia-tinted photographs

Pennsylvania resident and voracious traveler Anna Dubrovsky covers the best of the Keystone State, including Philadelphia, Amish country, the Pocono Mountains, Hershey, and Presque Isle. She offers a variety of unique travel strategies—from kid-pleasing getaways to rail fan meccas—and details the most popular sights, including the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Gettysburg National Military Park, and Fallingwater. Complete with expert tips on places to dine, sleep, and shop, Moon Pennsylvania gives travelers the tools they need to create a more personal and memorable experience.

Phantom Gettysburg discusses the contemporary alternative version of a perceived haunted battlefield. In order to understand this alternative perception, contemporary anomalous phenomena must be affixed to and analyzed within their exact historical setting and social context. An ethnographic model of mid-19thc. American culture is used as the basis for this analysis. Specifically, the cultural beliefs relative to the concepts of death and the afterlife, as it was envisioned by these soldiers, is the basis for this model. This historical ethnographic analysis serves two purposes. First, it is a means to legitimize the methodology and fieldwork practices of ghost research. Second, it is meant to analyze the Gettysburg experience and its haunting uncertainty in its historical and sociocultural environment. The conclusion that is drawn from this comparative approach alters the reality and representation of an interactive ghostly battlefield presence. A Gettysburg haunted by Civil War soldiers is considered, for the most part, a phantom experience.

“A clear and concise telling” of America’s most famous battle. “[Hoptak] has crafted a narrative that is similar to a well led tour of the battlefield” (Civil War Librarian). Fought on the first three days of July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg was one of the largest and by far the bloodiest of the Civil War. Yet the importance of this great conflagration cannot be measured in numbers alone, for Gettysburg also represented a pivotal moment in the war. The battle ended General Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of Union soil, and never again did a Confederate army reach that far north. Join historian John Hoptak as he narrates the fierce action between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac at such places as McPherson’s Ridge, the Railroad Cut, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, Little Round Top and on Culp’s and Cemetery Hills. “His expertise comes through loud and clear in his energetic prose, combining narrative and analysis in a book that enlightens novices without boring more experienced readers.” —Historynet.com

Ghosts of Gettysburg: Walking on Hallowed Ground is a keep-you-up-all-night book from real life master ghost hunters, Drs. Dave and Sharon Oester, cofounders of the International Ghost Hunters Society, the largest ghost research society on the Internet. Drs. Dave and Sharon Oester spend their time traveling the back roads of America, investigating some of its most haunted places. Over a six-year period, they explored and recorded the amazing ghostly experiences of visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield. One year they devoted a full month for battlefield investigations and drove over 1,000 miles on the battlefield gathering data for this book. Drs. Dave and Sharon Oester were the first to hold ghost conferences in Gettysburg teaching about ghost photography and electronic voice phenomena known as EVP. Their annual ghost conferences started the ghost hunting movement in Gettysburg. Drs. Dave and Sharon Oester share 40 haunted sites on the battlefield, not according to folklore, but from their own personal investigations using scientific tools to validate the existence of ghosts. Each haunted site contains a short history of its part in this three-day battle. Read about the ten most haunted Civil War hospitals sites that can be visited by the reader.

This book is the third in a series of anthropological studies which analyze ghosts and haunting phenomena in their cultural context. A history of visitations to the Gettysburg landscape is linked to the presence or absence of anomalous sensory manifestations. The preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the hauntings at Gettysburg may be a product of sociocultural factors, in part related to the growth of heritage tourism, rather than any ghostly manifestations by civil war soldiers. Since this is a preliminary analysis, a research design is proposed to further excavate the Gettysburg landscape. This approach is based on the use of ethnographic context, spatial symmetry, cultural relativity, and performance-based investigative practices. The author proposes that through this methodology, acontrolled excavation of the landscape can be made, thus unearthing a more scientific analysis and evaluation of Gettysburg as a haunted cultural place.

Of the more than seventy sites associated with the Civil War era that the National Park Service manages, none hold more national appeal and recognition than Gettysburg National Military Park. Welcoming more than one million visitors annually from across the nation and around the world, the National Park Service at Gettysburg holds the enormous responsibility of preserving the war’s “hallowed ground” and educating the public, not only on the battle, but also about the Civil War as the nation’s defining moment. Although historians and enthusiasts continually add to the shelves of Gettysburg scholarship, they have paid only minimal attention to the battlefield itself and the process of preserving, interpreting, and remembering the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. In On a Great Battlefield, Jennifer M. Murray provides a critical perspective to Gettysburg historiography by offering an in-depth exploration of the national military park and how the Gettysburg battlefield has evolved since the National Park Service acquired the site in August 1933. As Murray reveals, the history of the Gettysburg battlefield underscores the complexity of preserving and interpreting a historic landscape. After a short overview of early efforts to preserve the battlefield by the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (1864–1895) and the United States War Department (1895–1933), Murray chronicles the administration of the National Park Service and the multitude of external factors—including the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the Civil War Centennial, and recent sesquicentennial celebrations—that influenced operations and molded Americans’ understanding of the battle and its history. Haphazard landscape practices, promotion of tourism, encouragement of recreational pursuits, ill-defined policies of preserving cultural resources, and the inevitable turnover of administrators guided by very different preservation values regularly influenced the direction of the park and the presentation of the Civil War’s popular memory. By highlighting the complicated nexus between preservation, tourism, popular culture, interpretation, and memory, On a Great Battlefield provides a unique perspective on the Mecca of Civil War landscapes. Jennifer M. Murray, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, is the author of The Civil War Begins. Her articles have appeared in Civil War History, Civil War Times, and Civil War Times Illustrated.

An unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war by one of our finest war correspondents. Drawn from experience and interviews by Pulitzer-prize-winner Chris Hedges, this book looks at the hidden costs of war, what it does to individuals, families, communities and nations. In fifteen short chapters, Chris Hedges astonishes us with his clear and cogent argument against war, not on philosophical grounds or through moral arguments, but in an irrefutable stream of personal encounters with the victims of war, from veterans and parents to gravely wounded American serviceman who served in the Iraq War, to survivors of the Holocaust, to soldiers in the Falklands War, among others. Hedges reported from Sarajevo, and was in the Balkans to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2002 he published War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, which the Los Angeles Times described as “the best kind of war journalism… bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical” and the New York Times called “a brilliant, thoughtful, timely, and unsettling book.” In the twenty years since, Hedges has not wanted to write another book on the subject of war—until now, with the outbreak of war in Ukraine. It is important again to be reminded who are the victors of the spoils of war and of other unerring truths, not only in this war but in all modern wars, where civilians are always the main victims, and the tools and methods of war are capable of so much destruction it boggles the mind. This book is an unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war by one of our finest war correspondents.

During the crucial three days of combat at Gettysburg, the most nightmarish place on the entire battlefield was appropriately named the Devil's Den. This jumble of huge boulders situated at the southern end of Houck's Ridge was truly a hell on earth during the decisive afternoon of July 2, 1863. The tenacious struggle that raged beyond control at the battle-line's southern end was all-important, because the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge anchored the left flank of the over-extended Union battle-line, before Federal troops occupied Little Round Top to the east. The battle-hardened veterans of Lieutenant General James Longstreet's First Corps captured this vital sector-- the first Union left flank--in one of the few Southern successes of the second day, after some of the war's most bitter fighting. Nevertheless, the dramatic story of the successful turning of the first Union left flank has been long overlooked and ignored largely because of the giant historical shadow cast by the more famous struggle at Little Round Top, which was only the second and last fight for the southern flank of both armies on July 2. Therefore, the important contest for possession of the first Union left flank at the Devil's Den and Houck's Ridge was crucial on the bloody afternoon that decided the fate of America.

The heavily wooded slopes of CulpÕs Hill do not easily lend themselves to visions of long, gallant lines of charging infantry as do other areas on the battlefield at Gettysburg. But the regimental monuments and traces of breastworks that line the slopes of CulpÕs Hill bear silent testament to a hellish conflict: no other spot at Gettysburg would see such a sustained period of brutal combat as when North and South vied for this ground. The reader is invited to tour this seldom explored segment of the battle using maps, photos, and first-hand accounts to help understand the unique character of the struggle for CulpÕs Hill and the men who fought for its slopes.