Gone for Soldiers

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 Ver...