San Marino Community Church will present a book event on Sunday, Jan. 14, at 3 p.m., featuring Ronald C. White who will discuss his new biography, “On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.”
White, Scholar in Residence at SMCC, is the author of two New York Times bestselling presidential biographies: “A. Lincoln: A Biography,” and “American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant.” He is also the author of “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural,” a New York Times notable book; “The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words,” a Los Angeles Times bestseller; and “Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President,” recipient of the 2021 Barondess/Lincoln award.
Chamberlain is familiar to millions from Michael Shaara’s classic novel of the Civil War, “The Killer Angels,” Ken Burns’ miniseries, “The Civil War” and Jeff Daniels’ portrayal of Chamberlain in the movie “Gettysburg.” In “On Great Fields,” White captures the complex and inspiring man behind the hero.
Before 1862, Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred, and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes. In 1863, on the second day at Gettysburg, after running low on ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg — and told by two surgeons he would die — Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times, and serve as president of Bowdoin College.
How did a stuttering boy come to be fluent in nine languages and eventually teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? Award-winning historian White delves into these pieces of a puzzle in this definitive, cradle-to-death biography of Chamberlain, from his youthful formation, his tenacious, empathetic military leadership, and his influential post-war public service.
“On Great Fields” was published by Penguin Random House on Oct. 31. The book event is free and will be held in the church’s Fellowship Hall.
First published in the Jan. 4 issue of the San Marino Tribune
