Meacham, Jon (April–May 2011). "Shelby Foote's War Story: How a Memphis novelist's history of the Civil War made history itself". Garden & Gun . Retrieved 2011-05-08. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 139. The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House. 1958. ISBN 0-307-29039-5.

Shelby Foote - Wikipedia

Your comment is typical of the Lost Cause fog Gettysburg has fallen into for 157 years. First, they were not “three horrific days” they were the glorious defeat of slavers and traitors.” The other, the southern, Lost Cause perspective, rightly says the south were fighting against enormous odds and an unstoppable North, but also puts a stamp of nobility on it. As if defending a slave system can ever be noble.

The books are so well written (they are 3) that you follow the events forgetting that you know yet the end. Honey-voiced, sporting a full beard and drawing from a seemingly endless well of war anecdotes, he became a star of Ken Burns's 11-hour public television documentary, which aired in 1990. Described as gregarious, he nevertheless disliked the torrent of sudden interest in his life. He told People magazine, "What I do requires steady work and isolation from all this hoorah." The Civil War: A Narrative, Fort Donelson to Memphis (40th Anniversaryed.). Alexandria, VA: Time-Life. 1999. ISBN 0-7835-0101-3. In the end the book (and of course the horrific history it accounts) is as tragic and awful as it gets.

The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote | Goodreads

The Civil War: A Narrative, Petersburg to Savannah: War Is Cruelty–You Cannot Refine It. New York: Random House. 2005. ISBN 0-307-29030-1. At nine minutes into the first episode, the film’s only historian with a doctorate, Barbara Fields—now recognized as one of the world’s foremost scholars on race and racism—unequivocally stated that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. The bloodiest time in our nation’s history, she argued, was about “humanity, human dignity, human freedom.”Timothy S. Huebner, Madeleine M. McGrady. "Shelby Foote, Memphis, and the Civil War in American Memory". 22

The Civil War: A Narrative - 3 Volume Box Set: Foote, Shelby

a b Coates, Ta-Nehisi (June 13, 2011). "The Convenient Suspension of Disbelief". The Atlantic . Retrieved October 26, 2021. Shelby Foote then binds all these events and facts together in an incredibly engaging narrative that reads like a character-driven novel rather than historical non-fiction. Makes for engrossing reading. Survivors include his wife, Gwyn Ranier, whom he married in 1956, a daughter from his second marriage, Margaret Foote, and a son from his third marriage, Huger Foote, all of Memphis. The Civil War: A Narrative, James Crossing to Johnsonville (40th Anniversaryed.). Alexandria, VA: Time-Life. 2000. ISBN 0-7835-0111-0. In 1999, Foote received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from The College of William & Mary. [61] [62]

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Yet as I grew older reading broadly on both the war itself and the 19th-century South, enjoying scholars such as Bell Irvin Wiley, John Hope Franklin, and Victoria Bynum, I realized that I fell in love with the series—but not for its historical accuracy. Instead, it offered a kind of self-satisfaction for me as a white American, and, more importantly, as a white Southerner. I came to realize that by downplaying the importance—and horrors—of slavery, and instead concentrating on hard-fought battles, valiant, virile soldiers, and heart-wrenching tales of romantic love and loss, the documentary specifically targeted one audience: white people. In a 2011 commentary, Ta-Nehisi Coates concluded that Foote was not guilty of "neo-Confederate apologia." However, Foote "gave twenty years of his life, and three volumes of important and significant words to the Civil War, but he could never see himself in the slave. He could not get that the promise of free bread can not cope with the promise of free hands. Shelby Foote wrote The Civil War, but he never understood it. Understanding the Civil War was a luxury his whiteness could ill-afford." [7]

Civil War’: Ken Burns series turns 30 amid Breonna ‘The Civil War’: Ken Burns series turns 30 amid Breonna

Panabaker, James. Shelby Foote and the Art of History: Two Gates to the City (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2004)Foote worked for several weeks on an outline and decided that his plan couldn't be done to Cerf's specifications. He requested that the project be expanded to three volumes of 500,000 to 600,000 words each, and he estimated that the entire project would be done in nine years. [13] Over many years I have read about many Civil War battles, and the problems that Lincoln faced, but this is the first time I have learned in any detail about what the South thought was going on. Without claiming sympathy with the motives of the Lost Cause, Shelby Foote presented a number of speeches and other denunciations of Yankee tyranny, barbarism, cruelty, and alleged racial inferiority from Jefferson Davis and various political and military figures of the Confederacy, and their claim to be the true heirs of the Revolution. They also maintained that the Confederate Constitution represented the Original Intent of the Founders, particularly slave owners like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, in spite of the fact that both freed their slaves in their wills.