Preview: Eric Wittenberg, “Protecting the Flank at Gettysburg”

Savas Beatie has re-issued Eric Wittenberg’s 2002 effort Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Battle of Gettysburg, July 2-3, 1863, re-titling it with the more marketable and less comma laden title of Protecting the Flank at Gettysburg: The Battles for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field, July 2-3, 1863. Other than the subtle name change, the first noticeable difference between the two books is that the great-big-giant spacing in the earlier Ironclad Publishing edition is gone, and Savas Beatie has printed this one in a more standard format. There has been some re-writing and shifting of chapter numbers, with a new introduction and the old intro moved to Chapter 1. GPS coordinates have been added to the driving tour. And most interesting of all to Gettysburg and cavalry nerds are two new appendices in which Mr. Wittenberg takes on the work Thomas Carhart, author of Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why it Failed, which waxes theoretical on just what moved J. E. B. Stuart to do what he did on July 3, 1863. Check it out.