Chickamauga: And Other Civil War Stories

Book Overview

Shelby Foote's monumental historical trilogy, " The Civil War: A Narrative ," is our window into the day-by-day unfolding of our nation's defining event. Now Foote reveals the deeper human truth behind the battles and speeches through the fiction he has chosen for this vivid, moving collection. These ten stories of the Civil War give us the experience of joining a coachload of whores left on a siding during a battle in Virginia . . .marching into an old man's house to tell him it's about to be burned down . . .or seeing a childhood friend shot down at Chickamauga. The result is history that lives again in our imagination, as the creative vision of these great writers touches our emotions and makes us witness to the human tragedy of this war, fought so bravely by those in blue and gray.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385311001
• ISBN13: 9780385311007
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: Delta
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable mixed-bag anthology of Civil War short fiction

One of America's most famous Civil War historians, novelist Shelby Foote, put together this anthology of short Civil War fiction which also includes one of his own stories. In his introduction to this collection, he does complain about the dearth of Civil War short-fiction and the difficulties in finding just the right stories to bring to life the war for modern readers. If that is true, he did a fine job with this collection. As he also notes in his intro, he has managed to divide this collection evenly between Northerners and Southerners, quite a feat, actually. And the opposing perspective visions are fascinating. Probably most post-modern American readers won't appreciate this collection. 21st Century Americans are woefully ignorant of the events leading up to the war and the tremendous grace and reconciliation of the combatants in the decades following it. But the US would have failed as a nation had that grace and reconciliation not been brought to bear on the belligerents who went on to forge the world's greatest economic, military, and democratic power the world has ever seen. But getting back to this book, Chickamauga and Other Civil War Stories, like most anthologies, is a mixed bag. The historian in Foote put Jefferson Davis' inaugural address at the beginning and Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address at the end. Very clever, especially as their brevity makes for an interesting perspective of the war from both sides. The rest of the pieces are fiction. Some selections are not easy on the 21st Century ear, especially as they adopt the difficult regional dialects of some characters and a descriptive prose that was denser in the early 20th century than most fiction writers use today. My favorite (and the most modern of them all) is Ambrose Pierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" a speculative story about the execution of a Confederate saboteur that has appeared in many such anthologies. I also enjoyed Shelby Foote's own contribution, "Pillar of Fire" which is probably the most "historical fiction" of all the stories... as would be expected of this author. This was a quick read for me. I highly recommend it to those with an interest in American history, the Civil War and historical fiction. I only gave this four stars because, like most anthologies, there are always one or two stories included that some readers will absolutely hate. But I liked all of it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Enjoy!