APRIL FOR THE UNION HEROES. 2/8: On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White (Author)

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 13 April 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

APRIL FOR THE UNION HEROES. 2/8: On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Fields-Unlikely-Lawrence-Chamberlain/dp/0525510087/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1707433634&sr=1-1

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg—and told by two surgeons he would die—Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College.

1864 PHIL SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK

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0:00.0	Ready to plug into the future of podcasting? The podcast show is back. The biggest international festival for the business of podcasting hits London on the 21st and 22nd of May.
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0:47.8	I'm John Batchelor.
0:49.0	I'm with Ron White.
0:50.2	His new book is On Great Fields of Life and Unlikly Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
0:54.7	If you've heard that name before, yes, we're headed to Gettysburg.
0:58.3	But right now, we're at Bowdoin College, one of the esteemed higher learning centers in America.
1:05.3	And Bowden College sees the talent that Lawrence Chamberlain represents and invites him to be a member of the faculty temporarily.
1:15.3	He marries in 1855 to Fannie, and they go to Bowden College, Brunswick, 100 miles south of Brewer.
1:22.7	And right away, he has interest in the pupils.
1:25.8	Was that unusual for an educator in these days, Ron?
1:30.3	Well, he had a wide-ranging interest, although he very much valued his own education as a student.
1:36.4	He felt that as a teacher, he had to open up a wider range of possibilities, both in terms of what the students read, but also in the way that he taught.
1:46.3	Sometimes the students were viewed simply by the other faculty as boys who needed to be regimented.
1:52.2	He wanted to teach them what we might call critical thinking.
1:55.5	Let them think for themselves.
	...

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