Living in Gettysburg, historian Thomas Desjardin discovered that many of the most well-known stories of the battle are badly distorted versions of the original events.

In These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory Desjardin describes how the postwar efforts of John Bachelder, Dan Sickles, and others helped to create the modern view of what happened at the battle. He raises the disturbing question: is it possible ever to know what really happened in the past?