While researching Searching for George Gordon Meade, author Tom Huntington visited a severed leg, a buried arm, and a horse’s head. He also hiked across Civil War battlefields, recited the names of fallen soldiers at a candlelit ceremony at Gettysburg, and drank a champagne toast in a Philadelphia cemetery on New Year’s Eve.



"Despite his great victory at Gettysburg and his command of the army that forced Lee's surrender at Appomattox, George Meade saw his fame eclipsed by that of Lee, Grant, and other Civil War generals. This book does a great deal to redress that historical injustice. Tom Huntington has invented a new genre of biography that shifts between past and present as he tells the story of Meade's life and describes his own pilgrimage to the key sites of that life. The result is an engrossing narrative that the reader can scarcely put down." --James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom "Searching for George Gordon Meade is a splendid book! Well-researched, well-reasoned, and well-written, it's a timely and vital addition to the all-too-meager literature on this neglected American hero. Strongly recommended for serious historians as well as for a general readership. Excellent!"--Ralph Peters, author of Cain at Gettysburg "Much more than another Civil War biography, Tom Huntington's gripping personal‘search' for George Gordon Meade is unique and irresistible: a combination life story, military history, travelogue, and cultural commentary that brings us closer than ever to the old general and his strange reputation--and also opens new windows to our own unending search for an understandable national identity." --Harold Holzer, author and Chairman of Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation A historian's investigation of the life and times of Gen. George Gordon Meade to discover why the hero of Gettysburg has failed to achieve the status accorded to other generals of the conflict.