GETTYSBURG

The sound effects are good, the narration clear and crisp, the various voices even better. Yet this radio drama gets tiring after awhile, an endless spectacle of blood and dust and insects and carnage. That's what the war itself was like, of course. Here are the fatigue, the despair, the pain, the screams, the deafening cannon plowing through human ranks, death, dismemberment, despair. Sometimes the politicians are heard. More often the generals and officers and foot soldiers. One would swear that a newspaper reporter with cassette recorder in hand were dashing around the battlefield in the thick of it. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 01]