Genesis of the Sharaa phenomenon

Assumption: Killer Angels was a best seller. Assumption: Ted Turner exploited the popularity of the book to make a Gettysburg movie with Ron Maxwell.

"Assume makes an ass of you and me," as they say. Well, maybe me more than you. According to this newspaper item, the genesis of this bestseller is entirely different: "The elder Shaara, who died in 1988, wrote The Killer Angels (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The movie based on that book, Gettysburg, was released in 1993, five years after his death — making his book a best-seller."

I would never have suspected that a junky film, a critically panned commercial flop (a film that represents monumental commercial failure), could make the underlying novel a best seller. Never would have occurred to me.