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The Civil War Trilogy Box Set: With American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative Hardcover – 23 March 2011
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On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Modern Library publishes Shelby Foote's three-volume masterpiece in a new boxed set including three hardcovers and a new trade paperback, American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic Civil War: A Narrative, edited by and with an introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and including essays by Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, and others.
Random House publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned southern novelist Shelby Foote to write a short, one-volume history of the American Civil War. Thirty years and a million and a half words later--every word having been written out longhand with nib pens dipped into ink--Foote published the third and final volume of what has become the classic narrative of that epic war.
As he approached the end of the final volume, Foote recounted this scene in a letter to his friend, the novelist Walker Percy: "I killed Lincoln last week--Saturday, at noon. While I was doing it (he had his chest arched up, holding his last breath to let it out) some halfassed doctor came to the door with vols I and II under his arm, wanting me to autograph them for his son for Xmas. I was in such a state of shock, I not only let him in; I even signed the goddam books, a thing I seldom do. Then I turned back and killed him and had Stanton say, 'Now he belongs to the ages.' A strange feeling, though. I have another 70-odd pages to go, and I have a fear they'll be like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Christ, what a man. It's been a great thing getting to know him as he was, rather than as he has come to be--a sort of TV image of himself, with a ghost alongside."
When Percy read the final book, he wrote to Foote: "It's a noble work. I'm still staggered by the size of the achievement. . . . It is The Iliad."
A selection of these letters, along with essays by Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, Michael Eric Dyson, Julia Reed, Robert Loomis, Donald Graham, John M. McCardell, Jr., and Jay Tolson, are included in American Homer, the bonus paperback book available only in the Modern Library boxed set of The Civil War.
Shelby Foote's tremendous, sweeping narrative of the most fascinating conflict in our history--a war that lasted four long, bitter years, an experience more profound and meaningful than any other the American people have ever lived through--begins with Jefferson Davis's resignation from the United States Senate and Abraham Lincoln's departure from Springfield for the national capital. It is these two leaders, whose lives continually touch on the great chain of events throughout the story, who are only the first of scores of exciting personalities that in effect make The Civil War a multiple biography set against the crisis of an age.
Four years later, Lincoln's second inaugural sets the seal, invoking "charity for all" on the Eve of Five Forks and the Grant-Lee race for Appomattox. Here is the dust and stench of war, a sort of Twilight of the Gods. The epilogue is Lincoln in his grave, and Davis in his postwar existence--"Lucifer in Starlight." So ends a unique achievement--already recognized as one of the finest histories ever fashioned by an American--a narrative that re-creates on a vast and brilliant canvas the events and personalities of an American epic: the Civil War.
- ISBN-100679643702
- ISBN-13978-0679643708
- EditionSlp Har/Pa
- PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
- Publication date23 March 2011
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions17.27 x 14.99 x 22.61 cm
- Print length2984 pages
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"A stunning book full of color, life, character and a new atmosphere of the Civil War, and at the same time a narrative of unflagging power. Eloquent proof that an historian should be a writer above all else."--Burke Davis
"This is historical writing at its best. . . . It can hardly be surpassed."--Library Journal
"Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War, as thousands of Americans apparently do, will go through this volume with pleasure. . . . Years from now, Foote's monumental narrative most likely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of its kind."--New York Herald Tribune Book Review
"To read this great narrative is to love the nation--to love it through the living knowledge of its mortal division. Whitman, who ultimately knew and loved the bravery and frailty of the soldiers, observed that the real Civil War would never be written and perhaps should not be. For me, Shelby Foote has written it. . . . This work was done to last forever."--James M. Cox, Southern Review
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- Publisher : Random House Publishing Group; Slp Har/Pa edition (23 March 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 2984 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679643702
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679643708
- Dimensions : 17.27 x 14.99 x 22.61 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 226,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Reviewed in Mexico on 11 January 2024
Please note, this is not a social or political history of the reasons for war, beyond the essential facts of secession and the abolition movement. It is primarily a military narrative that paints detailed and convincing portraits of the key participants in the war, their manoeuvres and materiel, and the occasions on which they met in battle and butchered each other.
There has been some (somewhat justified) criticism of the work as it does not talk about - for instance - important black figures of the abolition movement: a correct observation, but the book is not about abolition, it's about war - don't expect long discussions about the 'right to secede' or the 'moral duty to abolish slavery' by force of war.
This is a book about the war itself; an account of the many thousands of 19th century Americans who took up arms and slaughtered each other in unprecedented numbers. If you are looking for a detailed political and social history of the era regarding slavery and the progress of the abolition movement; the rights and wrongs of secession (or federal force); or an account of the war in the context of contemporary discussions about white supremacy in the US or the roots of 'systemic racism' in the transatlantic slave trade - then you will be disappointed. This book does not analyse the reasons for war in order to justify a side, it comes from a long tradition of written history that assumes you have a moral compass of your own and don't need one spelled out.
However, for a hugely informative and entertaining account of the courage & cowardice, sacrifice & selfishness, benevolence & butchery, moral crusade & madness of this historical example of killing on an industrial scale, then read this book, and re-read it. It is exciting and melancholy, inspiring and depressing: a superb achievement of scholarship and a fantastic read.
Such as it is, I don't think it will ever be equalled.