Tom Carhart

As an audio book, "Lost Triumph" had shortcomings as far as I was concerned. The author provides a lot of detail discussing different battles, including of course, Gettysburg, but when listening to descriptions of which General, which army, which regiment, which battalion, which company, which platoon, which brigadier, which major, which captain, which direction the troops came from and went to, which hill they took, etc., I really could have used a physical map and roster of players and teams they all played on to have it make sense. It's problematic to pause the audiobook to envision what the author is talking about, and then pick it up in the same place.
So to me, I would have been better off picking this book up in its print edition. Then you can pause if / when needed, see any accompanying drawings or diagrams, get a clear vision in your mind, and pick up again.
Carhart's premise is that General Robert E. Lee's loss at Gettysburg wasn't due to poor planning on the General's part, but due to failures of timing and execution of his three pronged attack. Part of the problem was normal battlefield miscues, but also the unexpected delay of of the third prong of the planned attack under J.E.B. Stuart and the cavalry troops he was leading. Opposing Stuart was Federal cavalry troops led by George Armstrong Custer (of subsequent Sioux Indian and the Battle of the Little Bighorn infamy).
Carhart also spends some time early in the book describing how General Robert E. Lee, while at the Military Academy at West Point, studied the war tactics of Napolean Bonaparte and Hannibal, and used the lessons learned from those successful campaigns during his own planning in the Civil War. However, as I mentioned earlier, I found the descriptions of those early historical battles and the players involved somewhat difficult to follow in the audiobook format, causing me to put the book aside time and time again.
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Tom Carhart, a military man, has in this book answered a question I always had about the battle at Gettysburg. Why would a brilliant general like Lee order Pickett's charge? It seemed like a suicide mission to me. Carhart's research led him to the theory that the charge was actually half of a good plan. Jeb Stuart's calvary was supposed to approach the Union line from the rear so that the line would be caught between Stuart and Pickett, and the fishhook end of the Union line would collapse. Some of the book was difficult for me to follow because of the logistics and military maneuvers, but I got the gist of it and I think Carhart is probably right. Lee never spoke of the Civil War after it was over and never blamed anyone but himself for failures, so it took every bit of Carhart's research skills to figure it out. This isn't an easy book, but it's fascinating.… (más)