
1958
First Published
4.44
Average Rating
852
Number of Pages
Part of Series
The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1 begins one of the most remarkable works of history ever fashioned. All the great battles are here, of course, from Bull Run through Shiloh, the Seven Days Battles, and Antietam, but so are the smaller ones: Ball's Bluff, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island Ten, New Orleans, and Monitor versus Merrimac. The word "narrative" is the key to this extraordinary book's incandescence and its truth. The story is told entirely from the point of view of the people involved in it. One learns not only what was happening on all fronts but also how the author discovered it during his years of exhaustive research. This first volume in Shelby Foote's comprehensive history is a must-listen for anyone interested in one of the bloodiest wars in America's history.
Avg Rating
4.44
Number of Ratings
13,265
5 STARS
61%
4 STARS
27%
3 STARS
9%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Shelby Foote
Author · 33 books
Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American novelist and a noted historian of the American Civil War, writing a massive, three-volume history of the war entitled The Civil War: A Narrative. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South. Foote was relatively unknown to the general public for most of his career until his appearance in Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was "central to all our lives."