Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction
books of all time
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.
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