For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Dominic J. Caraccilo’s review of “A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine” by Jared Peatman, first published April 1, 2026, in Booklist.
Enjoy.
“A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine”
By Jared Peatman. June 2026. 352p. illus. Stackpole, $34.95 (9780811778152).
Peatman returns to the well-known saga of the Twentieth Maine, who fought in the Civil War, with a fresh, research-driven approach that goes beyond a familiar hero story. Rather than retelling Little Round Top as a set piece, Peatman organizes the book around guiding questions that explain how a volunteer civilian regiment became an effective fighting force, how Joshua Chamberlain developed into a combat leader, and why unit reputation mattered to soldiers and communities both during the war and long after it. The Gettysburg chapter is positioned as the most comprehensive treatment yet of the regiment’s fight, but the real payoff is that the narrative keeps moving, tracing the mutineers of the Second Maine, the hard remainder of the war, and the difficult work of returning home. Peatman also follows how veterans argued, remembered, and guarded the meaning of their stand as memory hardened into history. This book is best for readers who want a modern regimental history that pairs combat detail with soldier experience, leadership development, and postwar memory.— Dominic J. Caraccilo
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