Copying his father's approach of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies (
General Robert E. Lee,
Major General Winfield Scott Hancock,
Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and
Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain), Shaara depicted the emotional drama of soldiers fighting old friends while accurately detailing historical details including troop movements, strategies, and tactical combat situations. General Hancock, for instance, spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the
Confederate Army,
Lewis "Lo" Armistead. The novel also deals with General Lee's disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson's religious fervor. In addition to covering events leading up to the war, the book includes the
First Battle of Bull Run, covered only from the perspective of Robert E. Lee, who was in Richmond at the time and thus not at the battle. Other battles described in the novel are
Williamsburg,
Second Bull Run,
Antietam,
Fredericksburg, and
Chancellorsville. The
film version provides only cursory coverage of immediate pre-war events, focusing primarily on Jackson and the
secession of
Virginia, and omits Antietam (included in the Director's Cut) along with Williamsburg and Second Bull Run. It spends a considerable amount of time on First Bull Run, which played only a minor role in the book. ==Awards==