Gettysburg: You Are There

by Robert Clasby

Book Overview

A tour de force of computer-enhanced photography and meticulous research, this is a photographic recreation of pivotal moments in the Battle of Gettysburg. Modern battlefield photographs, re-enactor... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1580801110
• ISBN13: 9781580801119
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Burford Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 10.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a Killer Angel's picture book

if you liked the Killer Angels then you'll like this book the battle information isn't to indepth which allows even novice Civil War buffs to enjoy it and though some of the things in the pictures look kind of corny overall they look very stunning.

An amazing book, a fascinating read!

Having recently visited Gettysburg, I picked up Clasby's reconstruction of the fateful battle and found this to be an amazing book. Starting from the disastrous Union rout at Chancellorsville, Clasby takes us through the reasoning that led Robert Lee on his invasion of the North. In part, Lee was overly confident after repeated Confederate battlefield victories. More importantly, he was driven to desperate measures by the knowledge that Grant's Army of the Tennessee was on the point of seizing Vicksburg and sundering the Confederacy, making the ultimate outcome of the Civil War a foregone conclusion in favor of the Union. In many ways, Lee's bold drive into Maryland and Pennsylvania was strategically brilliant given his dire circumstances. This final throw of the dice was doomed however with Lee's commanders, especially J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry, letting him down at key times and Lee himself making critical errors at Gettysburg. Clasby's reconstruction of the battle, from the gathering of the forces, to the opening skirmishes west of Gettysburg, right to the bloody climax of Pickett's fateful charge is excellently told. The heart of the book however is a series of over a dozen large computer-manipulated photographs. Starting with present-day digital photos of key battleground sites, software was used to edit out all traces of present day structures like bridges, modern roads, railway lines etc. The edited images were then populated with photographs of Union and Confederate re-enactors to simulate actual scenes of fighting. The result is startling to say the least, as one views what appear to be actual battle photographs. However the pristine condition of the green grass (almost like mowed lawns!) and the absence of blood and gore, to say nothing of torn up earth, makes the pictures resemble stylized paintings or video game imagery rather than reconstructed reality. Towards the end, I found the photographs to be more a distraction, even an annoyance, rather than an aid to understanding. In fact, Clasby would have done better to include maps of the region along with his re-telling of the battle. The only map is the battlefield tour of Gettysburg offered by the National Park Service! Civil war buffs and all who remember Abraham Lincoln's immortal words at the Gettysburg cemetery after the battle will find this book a fascinating read.

A unique look at a great Civil War battle

Considering the extraordinary number of books published about the American Civil War, it is unusual when some previously unexplored niche is found by yet another new volume. But Robert Clasby's "Gettysburg: You Are There" is such a work. The heart of Clasby's book is formed by 15 photographs, 15 large computer enhanced and mainipulated images. In each case Clasby started with a modern photograph of a key combat site during the Gettysburg battle, ranging from Buford's defensive action on McPherson Ridge to the Angle of the third day's fighting. He then, with computer graphics, subtracted away or covered up post-battle clutter - monuments, roads, buildings - and then meticulously added photographs of reenactors taken upon many occasions, building up a reconstruction of what the fighting would have looked like in 1863: lines of battle, artillery batteries, dead soldiers in the fields. It's as close a photograph approach to depicting actual combat during the Gettysburg battle as anyone has yet achieved. I will not claim that the end results would be readily mistaken for something shot from the window of a time machine - the uniforms are too neat and clean, the flags too crisp, the smoke too sparse, the grass too green, plowed ground too untrampled. Overall, the impact is perhaps one of exceptionally good graphics from a new Civil War computer game rather than actual battlefield combat photography, but Clasby's efforts have produced something nonetheless worth looking at. Given National Park Service restrictions, it is unlikely that we will otherwise ever see hordes of musket-firing reenactors amidst the rocks of the Devils Den. Being a student of the 14th Connecticut Infantry, a regiment which defended the stretch of stone wall immediately north of the Angle during the July 3rd charge, I was pleased to see two of Clasby's photographs showing that position, including one quite literally from over the shoulders of the Connecticut men towards the advancing Confederates.