"Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War" by Jeff Shaara, published by Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 2000, Stated First Edition May 2000, 3rd Printing.

Dust jacket with original un-clipped price on the front flap; hard boards, gold lettering on spine, 6.1/4" x 9.1/4"; former owner exlibris on the front endpaper, xix + 424 pages + About the Author page, unread fine condition.

"In Gone for Soldiers, Jeff Shaara carries us back 15 years before the momentous conflict he has so brilliantly chronicled, to a time when the Civil War's most familiar names are fighting for another cause, junior officers marching under the same flag in an unfamiliar land, experiencing combat for the first time in the Mexican-American War.

In March 1847, 8,000 soldiers landed on the beaches of Vera Cruz, led by the army's commanding general, Winfield Scott-a heroic veteran of the War of 1812, short tempered, vain, and nostalgic for the glories of his youth. At his right hand is Robert E. Lee, a forty-year-old engineer, a dignified, serious man who has never seen combat."

"In vivid prose that illuminates the dark psychology of soldiers "rapped behind enemy lines, Jeff Shaara brings to life the familiar characters, the stunning triumphs and soul-crushing defeats of this fascinating, long-forgotten war."

"This is Shaara's successful prequel to his father Michael's Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War novel, The Killer Angels. Many of the same characters inhabit its pages but before their allegiances have been fatally strained by the tensions of an impending Civil War. The protagonists are Gen. Winfield Scott, who created our first modern army, and young engineer Robert E. Lee, being tested for the first time as soldier and leader in the little-known Mexican War. Add Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Jeb Stuart, Joe Johnston, Beauregarde, Mexican general Santa Anna-- what a cast of characters! The book is simply wonderful, populated with eminently human heroes who are called upon to perform Herculean tasks in a war muddied beyond redemption by the ambitions of back-home and battlefield politicians. Like Patrick Rambaud's The Battle this is first-rate military historical fiction. Well worth reading." [from a review]

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