The Civil War: A Narrative : Fredericksburg to Stelle Bayou: 5 (SHELBY FOOTE, THE CIVIL WAR, A NARRATIVE)

by Shelby Foote

Book Overview

SHOULD STATE IN VERY GOOD CONDITION This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0783501048
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Time Life Books
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 1.0" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Live the Civil War... It's worth your time and effort

Even as an avid reader of US history, I'd read nothing about the Civil War before reading Foote's work. I was frankly intimidated by a topic that plenty of people spend their entire life studying. This spring, I finally tackled the Civil War and I jumped into the deep end by starting with Foote's 3-volume set. I couldn't be happier with my choice. There is no doubt that this set requires quite a committment of time and energy, but the reward is huge. Foote's attention to detail and narrative style draw you into the Civil War in a way that would be otherwise impossible. You get to know the characters, you feel their frustration and elation along with them, you develop an appreciation of the scale and scope of the struggle for the soldiers and civilians in a terrible time for the United States. The payoff is that you get to appreciate a few moments as if you were there: I cried when I read the Gettysburg Address, I felt the mutual esteem between Grant and Lee at Appomatox, I was dismayed by Lincoln's assassintation and its impact on the country, I was appalled by the treatment of Jefferson Davis after the war. You couldn't get this from a lesser or shorter account of the Civil War. If you truly want to get a sense of the Civil War, look no further. This masterwork by Shelby Foote will put you into the War and you will never regret your investment.

A mammoth history of the Civil War

I have just completed this almost 3000 page tome on the American Civil War. I am not American but have always found the Civil War fascinating. A while back I finally decided to purchase a book about the Civil War that would read well and also be informative. Well Foote's books certainly are that. It became an obsession with me to get home everday and read on.....it felt as if I was there. This is partly due to the fact that the books read like a novel (probably why it is called a narrative!). I have read critiscms of the book which state that Foote is pro-Confederate and that this is really a Confederate History....well this is nonsense. He handles both sides with equal deft care. His descriptions of the main battles...First Bull Run, Fredricksburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville are all excellent and not to mention the rest of the campaigns. My only critiscm if it can be called that is that his second and third book are far better than his first which tended to drag a little but this may be because things started to really heat up in the second and third book as did the War. Altogether an excellent book and kudos to the author. Now I have to find something else to fill the void.....?

A monumental work.

Shelby Foote's trilogy is the definitive work on the American Civil War, which was undoubtably the most pivotal event in our nation's history. It is beautifully written; reading all 2800 pages of Foote's work will not only provide you with a detailed knowledge of the Civil War but will also make you a better user of the English language. It brought the people, places, and events of the war to life for me in a way few other books have done. Many have given the author bad marks for his lack of footnotes and for his pro-Southern leanings. Both of these criticisms are very overstated, however. His bibliographical notes contained all the information I needed to know regarding his sources and offered a refreshing change from those thick history books in which footnotes take up one of every three pages. And while Foote definitely sympathizes with the South, he remains objective and tells the story from both sides (he did not title his books "The War of Northern Aggression", after all). My own Civil War ancestors fought for the North and I'm glad the Union prevailed, but I also have a tough time rooting against the outnumbered and poorly supplied Confederate forces.The comparisons of Foote's work with historian James McPherson's excellent and highly-recommended _Battle Cry of Freedom_ are misleading. The latter covers the entire Civil War era, not just the war itself. Events prior to the opening shots at Fort Sumter take up about one third of McPherson's book, compared with only fifty pages (of 2800) by Foote. And while McPherson spends about ten pages on the Battle of Gettysburg, Foote fills roughly 120 on the same topic. _Battle Cry_ is more of a scholarly and statistical work. It discusses topics such as the economic development of both the North and the South prior to 1860, the state of medicine during the mid-19th century, the changes in the federal tax system because of the war, and so on. It was never intended to be a substitute for Foote's masterpiece. In his extensive bibliography, McPherson gives Shelby Foote high marks as a historian and praises his three-volume work as the "most graphic epic" of the Civil War's military campaigns.I've read alot of books about the American Civil War, but have yet to find anything as impressive as these three. They belong in the library of anyone with an interest in U.S. history.

worth every detail--compellingly readable--thanks, Shelby

Perhaps the greatest accolade I heard of Shelby Foote's involvement with the PBS mini-series "The Civil War" was the admiring comment that he seemed to have been there. I feel very much the same way about this epic 3-volume set. McPhearson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" may be the standard one-volume history of the Civil War, and a fine work it is, but it offers nowhere near the feeling of proximity to people and events as does this massive labor of love. Foote is so good at so many of the writer/historian's crafts that combine to make this trilogy essential Civil War reading. His skill at bringing a novelist's eye to this material has already been frequently noted. But he also has a wonderful way of giving a reader the feeling for the terrain on which battles were fought, for the ebb and flow of those battles, for the character of the men involved (and what characters! the proud, obstinante Jeff Davis, the rugged, unwashed Grant, the patrician Lee, the moody, tragic Lincoln--who would dare invent them? Yet Foote brings them, and dozens more, to breathing life). He conveys equally well the movement of troops as he does ideas--not to mention the sights, sounds, smells of the era, be they on the battlefield, in the army camp, or the White House. These are books that I will turn to again and again (I just got done re-reading volume 3), because, like no one else, Shelby Foote not only makes me feel like he was there, but that *I* was too.