Three Roads to Gettysburg: Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation
Tim McGrath
Oct 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio
headphones
Audiobook
family_home
Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on October 21, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this audiobook
An epic, revelatory account of the Battle of Gettysburg, where George Meade, Lincoln's unexpected choice to lead the Union army, defeated Robert E. Lee and changed the course of the Civil War.
By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg. The epic three-day battle that followed proved to be the turning point in the war, and provided Lincoln the perfect opportunity to give the defining speech of the war—and a challenge to each generation of Americans to live by.
These men came from different parts of the country and very different upbringings: Robert E. Lee, son of the aristocratic and slaveholding South; George Gordon Meade, raised in the industrious, straitlaced North; and Abraham Lincoln, from the rowdy, untamed West. Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 split the country in two and triggered the Civil War. Lee and Meade found themselves on opposite sides, while Lincoln had the Sisyphean task of reuniting the country.
With a colorful supporting cast second to none, Three Roads to Gettysburg tells the story of these consequential men, this monumental battle, and the immortal address that has come to define America.
By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg. The epic three-day battle that followed proved to be the turning point in the war, and provided Lincoln the perfect opportunity to give the defining speech of the war—and a challenge to each generation of Americans to live by.
These men came from different parts of the country and very different upbringings: Robert E. Lee, son of the aristocratic and slaveholding South; George Gordon Meade, raised in the industrious, straitlaced North; and Abraham Lincoln, from the rowdy, untamed West. Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 split the country in two and triggered the Civil War. Lee and Meade found themselves on opposite sides, while Lincoln had the Sisyphean task of reuniting the country.
With a colorful supporting cast second to none, Three Roads to Gettysburg tells the story of these consequential men, this monumental battle, and the immortal address that has come to define America.
About the author
Tim McGrath is a winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature and two-time winner of the Commodore John Barry Book Award, as well as the author of the critically acclaimed biographies James Monroe: A Life and John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
