By Matthew Langdon Cost

Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War: At Every Hazard is a historical novel about one of that war’s genuine heroes, a college professor with no formal military training who, together with a small company of men, turned the tide of the battle and the war with a bayonet charge at Gettysburg. This was not the end of his exploits, however, and by war’s end, he was so respected that Ulysses S. Grant chose Chamberlain [Bowdoin 1852] to accept the South’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The novel traces his evolution from an arrogant, overbearing professor to unwitting and unlikely hero and leader of men. Interwoven are subplots including the coming of age of his young orphaned aide, a complicated marriage, and of course, lots of rousing battle scenes.