Lost Triumph - by Tom Carhart (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Thanks to Tom Carhart's painstaking and absorbing reconstruction of events, we now have a clear comprehension of what Lee planned for July 3--and why it went wrong."--James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

This is a fresh and fascinating new look at one of the most pivotal moments in American history: the Battle of Gettysburg, when Union forces repelled the brilliant Robert E. Lee, who had already thrashed a long line of Federal opponents--just as he was poised at the back door of the nation's capital.

Conventional wisdom holds that Lee made one profoundly wrong decision on the last day of the battle--launching "Pickett's Charge" uphill across an open field against the heart of the Union defense. But why would he have employed only a fifth of his forces at such a crucial moment?

Now, Tom Carhart offers a bold thesis--that Lee's heretofore unknown strategy at Gettysburg was to combine Pickett's frontal attack with a daring rear assault by the great Jeb Stuart to break the Union Army in half. Only in the battle's final hours was Stuart stopped by a force half the size of his own, led by a young, unproven general--George Armstrong Custer--who helped turn the tide of the war.

Destined to be controversial, Lost Triumph is a provocative reassessment of this monumental battle and a vivid, indispensable contribution to Civil War literature.

Review Quotes

"Sheds new light on the grandest battle of the Civil War, a remarkable achievement by any military historian."--Sir John Keegan, New York Times bestselling author of The Face of Battle

"Bold and provocative...sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs."--Jay Winik, New York Times bestselling author of April 1865

"Tom Carhart's Lost Triumph is, amazingly, a new, original and important contribution to our understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg."--David Hackett Fischer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Washington's Crossing and Paul Revere's Ride

"Not only a fine work of scholarship but a fine story."--Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle

About the Author

Tom Carhart has been a lawyer and a historian for the Department of the Army in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of West Point, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and has earned a Ph.D. in American and military history from Princeton University. He is the author of four books of military history and teaches at Mary Washington College near his home in the Washington, D.C. area.