GDG- Martin & Pfanz's books on Day 1 - a quick comparitive study

[James Cameron]

Alan,

Excellent head to head comparison of the two books.

Martin took a beating when the error-filled first edition came out.  It was 
really more the fault of the publisher, but unfortunately, his name was 
still on the cover, and he took much of the fall.  As you point out, though, 
the revised editions corrected much of the problems.

Martin also suffered for a long time from the knowledge that Pfanz was 
working on his on day one book, which was widely expected to be "the" 
definitive work on the first day, much as his second day book is for July 2. 
Martin's book, already under something of a cloud due to the first edition, 
was thought of as something that would have to do until Pfanz's new book 
arrived.

When Pfanz's work did come out, the response to it was at best somewhat 
muted.  Granted, The Second Day would be a hard act for any author to 
follow, but there was still a sense of the first day book not quite 
measuring up.  One side effect of this was that Martin's book came to be 
seen in a better light.

Personally, I do give Martin the edge, although Pfanz's book is by no means 
a bad one.  To some extent, I see the two as complimentary, since together 
they provide some useful differences in focus and interpretation.  Both are 
well worth having, and stand next to each other on my bookshelf.

You do raise a good point in terms of the authors' approaches to the 
sequence of events west and north of town, in terms of a time-based, or 
geographic approach.  In a way, this is a problem for any treatment of the 
first day.  The 1st and 11th Corps fought on two very distinct fronts, with 
not a whole lot of interaction until the retreat phase of the action. 
Unlike the second day, where the progressive nature of Longstreet's attack, 
working its way sequentiually up the line, provides a certain narrative 
continuity, when writing about the first day it can be difficult to keep 
from jumping back and forth from one corps sector to the other.  It can be 
very difficult to provide a strong narrative connection between events which 
happened at the same time, but on different parts of the line.  One has to 
explain, say, what took place on Barlow's Knoll, and then go back and 
discuss what took place on Seminary Ridge at the same time.  That's one 
reason I still hope John Imhoff will do a day one map study.  A visual 
depiction would go a long way toward allowing events on the two Corps fronts 
to be viewed in context.

Jim Cameron