Most Popular Books by Shelby Foote

This fictional re-creation of the battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants’ hearts and minds. Through the eyes of officers and illiterate foot soldiers, heroes and cowards, Shiloh creates a dramatic mosaic of a critical moment in the making of America, complete to the haze of gunsmoke and the stunned expression in the eyes of dying men. Shiloh, which was hailed by The New York Times as “imaginative, powerful, filled with precise visual details…a brilliant book” fulfills the standard set by Shelby Foote’s monumental three-part chronical of the Civil War.

This first volume of Shelby Foote''s classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear. Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel. Includes maps throughout. "Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives…a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."—Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News "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 "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

A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote''s novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O''Connor, yet utterly original.

A matchless account of the Battle of Gettysburg, drawn from Shelby Foote’s landmark history of the Civil War Shelby Foote’s monumental three-part chronicle, The Civil War: A Narrative, was hailed by Walker Percy as “an unparalleled achievement, an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist.” Here is the central chapter of the central volume, and therefore the capstone of the arch, in a single volume. Complete with detailed maps, Stars in Their Courses brilliantly recreates the three-day conflict: It is a masterly treatment of a key great battle and the events that preceded it—not as legend has it but as it really was, before it became distorted by controversy and overblown by remembered glory.

Shelby Foote''s magnificently orchestrated novel anticipates much of the subject matter of his monumental Civil War trilogy, rendering the clash between North and South with a violence all the more shocking for its intimacy. Love in a Dry Season describes an erotic and economic triangle, in which two wealthy and fantastically unhappy Mississippi families—the Barcrofts and the Carrutherses—are joined by an open-faced fortune hunter from the North, a man whose ruthlessness is matched only by his inability to understand the people he tries to exploit and his fatal incomprehension of the passions he so casually ignites. Combining a flawless sense of place with a Faulknerian command of the grotesque, Foote''s novel turns a small cotton town into a sexual battleground as fatal as Vicksburg or Shiloh—and one where strategy is no match for instinct and tradition.

Tournament is Shelby Foote''s first novel, published originally by Dial Press in 1949. Summa''s reprint includes an exclusive preface by the author concerning his literary deveopment and the genesis of Tournament and an introduction by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., the dean of American literature criticism. Tournament is a brilliant novel of the post-Civil War South, replete with Proustian and Faulknerian overtones. Many of the characters that appear in subsequent novels by Shelby Foote come onto the scene for the first time in this work. It is a must acquisition for every fan of Shelby Foote--From item description.

In September 1957 the South is mesmerized by events in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose governor has called out the National Guard as part of his attempt to halt the integration of Central High School. And in Memphis, two white men and a white woman are planning to capitalize on the confrontation between the races by kidnapping the grandson of a wealthy black entrepreneur and pinning the crime on white supremacists. The problem is that Podjo, Rufus, and Reeny have only an amateur''s understanding of what a kidnapping entails -- and a total, terrifying incomprehension of their victims. In September September a magisterial historian of the Civil War charts its distant repercussions in the streets of the contemporary South. By turns wryly comic, ribald, and chilling, Shelby Foote''s novel is at once a convincing thriller and a powerful tragicomedy of race. September September has been adapted by Larry McMurtry for the Turner Network Television film Memphis, starring Cybill Shepherd.

Interviews spanning thirty-seven years of the American author''s career cover his feelings on the art of writing, life in the South, writers who have influenced him, and the Civil War.

A narrative history of the American Civil War, which covers not only the battles and the troop movements but also the social background that brought on the war and led, in the end, to the South''s defeat.

Death of Foote''s mother and Percy''s battle with cancer, their letters are full of sly humor, good-natured ribbing, and a large dose of self-mockery.

Foote''s comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox. Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters. Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War 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.

Shelby Foote has drawn from his epic account another of the Civil War''s most dramatic episodes, the taking of the city of Vicksburg by the Union forces. Ulysses S. Grant fought a long campaign over tricky terrain to get to the heavily fortified city. All the while, he had to fend off his colleague and rival General John McClernand, who decided that his aspirations to Lincoln''s White House could best be realized by his possession of Vicksburg. When the city fell on July 4, 1863, after a protracted siege, it was a personal triumph for Grant and contributed largely to his later promotion to command of all the Union armies. Lincoln said that his general''s campaign to reach Vicksburg had been "one of the most brilliant in the world".

Photographer and architect Nell Dickerson began her exploration of antebellum homesteads with encouragement from her cousin-in-law renowned Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote. Her passion for forgotten and neglected buildings became a plea for preservation. Gone is a unique pairing of modern photographs and historical novella. In PILLAR OF FIRE, Foote offers a heartbreaking look at one mans loss as Union troops burn his home in the last days of the Civil War. Dickerson shares fascinating and haunting photographs, shining a poignant light on the buildings which survived Sherman''s burning rampage across the Confederacy, only to fall victim to neglect, apathy and poverty. From the photographer: The Civil War had been over for exactly ninety years in 1954, when my cousin, Shelby Foote, published--PILLAR OF FIRE--as part of his novel, Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative. The book''s stories painted a vivid picture of a fictitious Mississippi county steeped in Southern culture. PILLAR OF FIRE took readers into a heartbreaking and commonplace scene late in the Civil War, when Union troops moved through the civilian South destroying not only plantations but also ordinary homes and cabins. Those troops, battle-hardened and bitter from the loss of their own brethren, take no joy in burning a home in front of its dying, elderly owner and his frail servants. The cruelty of the circumstances is as much a given for them as the dying man''s grief over all the memories that burn with his house. Now, on the eve of the Civil War''s 150th commemoration, my mission is to draw attention not only to the architectural heritage devastated by the war but also the heritage we''ve lost since then: to neglect, to poverty, and to shame, as the war''s infamy colored the attitudes of later generations and tainted the homes those generations inherited. What the war didn''t take, time and apathy did. And yet those grand old homes whether mansion or cabin deserve our reverence and protection.

A narrative history of the American Civil War, which covers not only the battles and the troop movements but also the social background that brought on the war and led, in the end, to the South''s defeat.

Author and historian Shelby Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi on November 17, 1916. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and served with the U.S. Army artillery during World War II. He was dismissed in 1944 for using a government vehicle against regulations. He later enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, but did not see active duty. After being discharged from the military, he briefly became a journalist. He has written short stories, plays, and longer works, but is best known for his three-volume narrative history of the Civil War.

A landscape in narrative.

A narrative history of the battles, characters, and situations during the last years of the Civil War.

A narrative history of the American Civil War, which covers not only the battles and the troop movements but also the social background that brought on the war and led, in the end, to the South''s defeat.

A narrative history of the American Civil War, which covers not only the battles and the troop movements but also the social background that brought on the war and led, in the end, to the South''s defeat.

Foote''s comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox. Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters. Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War 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.

Foote''s comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox. Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters. Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War 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.