I think I've listened almost as frequently this year to spoken word recordings as to music CDs. In part because of the suspension last winter of daily broadcasts of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice on The Bible Study Hour, I've bought a number of recordings of sermons and exegesis and have been enriched by listening to the words of, among others, Bishop Fulton Sheen and Rev. George Rutler.



There's been instruction, too, in the BBC recordings of the wartime speeches of Sir Winston Churchill, and I've tried without success to find a CD recording of the state funeral of that great man, a recording that I once had on LP.



Today is the 140th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg and on Sunday I listened for the first time to a new spoken word CD, and one that I strongly recommend. James McPherson recently published Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg and also made available a CD on which he reads the work. The story of the battle, of the officers and soldiers, of the stakes involved, of heroism and suffering, of mistakes of great consequence and of plans gone awry and, later, of President Lincoln's great address on the site, is rich in meaning, lesson, and drama. McPherson says perhaps no word in the American language has greater historical resonance than Gettysburg. And the story of that epochal battle in southern Pennsylvania is compelling, heart-breaking, ennobling.