Gone for Soldiers

Jeff Shaara carries us back thirteen years before the Civil War, when that momentous conflict'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. Eight thousand marines land in Vera Cruz bound for a war against the Mexican army, including Winfield Scott, a general who made history in the War of 1812, and Robert E. Lee, a forty-year-old engineer as yet untested in battle.