*The Killer Angels* (1974) is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the Union and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was fought. The story is character-driven and told from the perspective of various protagonists.
Michael Shaara (June 23, 1928 – May 5, 1988) was an American author of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction. He was born to an Italian immigrant father (the family name was originally spelled Sciarra, which in Italian is pronounced in a similar way) in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated in 1951 from Rutgers University, where he joined Theta Chi, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division prior to the Korean War.
Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines during the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. The stress of this and his cigarette smoking caused him, at the early age of 36, to have a heart attack, from which he recovered completely. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara died of a heart attack in 1988 aged fifty-nine.
Shaara's children, Jeffrey and Lila, are also novelists. In 1997, Jeffrey Shaara established the annual *Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction*, awarded at Gettysburg College.
**Source**: [Michael Shaara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shaara) on Wikipedia.
