Historical novelist Jeff Shaara at Bookstore May 27

Novelist Jeff Shaara

5:15 p.m., May 23, 2005--Historical novelist Jeff Shaara, whose bestselling works have chronicled the American experience during the Revolutionary War, before and after the Civil War and during World War I, will autograph copies of his books for readers from 2-4:30 p.m., Friday, May 27, at the UD Bookstore in the Perkins Student Center.

The next day, Shaara will be the featured speaker at UD’s 156th Commencement, scheduled at 9 a.m., Saturday, May 28, in Delaware Stadium. Commencement, which is free and open to the public, is held outdoors, rain or shine.

Shaara’s novels have been praised for their attention to factual details of the historical events and eras described, as well as for the development of emotional ties between the reader and the characters.

He is the son of Michael Shaara, whose works included the Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War novel about the battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. After his father’s death in 1988, Shaara took over the management of his father’s estate.

While working on the production of the film Gettysburg, based on The Killer Angels, he became friends with film director Ron Maxwell, who had been close to Michael Shaara for the many years it took to bring the book to the screen. After the critical and commercial success of Gettysburg, Maxwell approached Shaara about the possibility of finding someone to continue the story, and Shaara decided to take on the project himself.

The result was Gods and Generals, a prequel to his father’s work that went on to spend 15 weeks as a national bestseller. He followed that book in 1998 with The Last Full Measure, a sequel to The Killer Angels, and it, too, became a national bestseller.

In 2000, he published Gone for Soldiers, which described many of the Civil War characters’ experiences in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. The next year, he published, Rise to Rebellion, the first in a two-volume story of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of key participants. The concluding volume, The Glorious Cause, was released in 2002, and both volumes became national bestsellers.

Shaara’s most recent book, To the Last Man, published last year, is a World War I novel that has received praise from Gen. Tommy Franks, Gen. Wesley Clark and Steve Forbes, who said that it “cements his reputation as a war writer of Tolstoyan or Homeric dimensions.” Shaara is now at work on the first volume in a trilogy on World War II.

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