Seeking to learn more about his great-grandfather's experiences there, Shaara took a family trip to Gettysburg in 1966. His son, Jeff, who was 14 at the time, explained that his father "had a bad heart and could not climb the hills, so he would send me up there to describe them to him . . . It was probably the best time in my life with my father." The two returned in 1970 to finish the research, and it was published in 1974 by David McKay, after 15 rejections by other publishers.
The book's genius is in Shaara's ability to narrow down a huge subject to a few people and events that could make it personal for the reader. Shaara's background provided the insight to see both sides of the conflict. The results are crisp characters, vivid images, and an objectivity that avoided making heroes out of one side or the other.
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, but there was not much public acclaim because it came out during the Vietnam War, a bad time for a war novel. Fame would not come until much later, five years after Shaara's death, when the film based on his book was released.
