Foote's comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox. Collected together in a handsome boxed set, this is the perfect gift for any Civil War buff.
Fort Sumter to Perryville
"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." --Van Allen Bradley, "Chicago Daily News"
"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
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Fredericksburg to Meridian"
""This, then, is narrative history--a kind of history that goes back to an older literary tradition.... The writing is superb...one of the historical and literary achievements of our time." --"The Washington Post Book World"
"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be bettered." --"Atlantic"
Red River to Appomattox
"An unparalleled achievement, an American "Iliad," a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist." --Walker Percy
"I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandable account of the savage battling between Grant's and Lee's armies.... Foote stays with the human strife and suffering, and unlike most Southern commentators, he does not take sides. In objectivity, in range, in mastery of detail in beauty of language and feeling for the people involved, this work surpasses anything else on the subject.... It stands alongside the work of the best of them." --"New Republic"

"I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandable account of the savage battling between Grant's and Lee's armies.... Foote stays with the human strife and suffering, and unlike most Southern commentators, he does not take sides. In objectivity, in range, in mastery of detail in beauty of language and feeling for the people involved, this work surpasses anything else on the subject.... It stands alongside the work of the best of them."--New Republic

Recreates the Battle of Gettysburg from both the Confederate and Union perspectives.

FORT SUMTER TO PERRYVILLE

"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

"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."--Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News

FREDERICKSBURG TO MERIDIAN

"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better."--Atlantic

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.

THIS 24 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Saturday Evening Post Stories, by Shelby Foote. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 141915253X.

THIS 24 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Saturday Evening Post Stories, by Shelby Foote. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 141915253X.

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.

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.

"The letters are a marvel of literary and artistic criticism; they include narrative blueprints, historical insights, and the occasional personal anecdote."—Kenneth Smith, Washington Times

In the late 1940s, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, friends since their teenage years in Greenville, Mississippi, began a correspondence that would last until Percy's death in 1990. Walker Percy, the highly regarded author of The Moviegoer, wrote six novels, two volumes of philosophical writings, and numerous essays. Shelby Foote met with early success as a novelist, but his reputation today rests more upon his massive three-volume narrative history of the Civil War, and his role as commentator in Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.

The correspondence between Percy and Foote traces their lives from the beginning of their respective careers, when they were grappling fiercely and openly with their ambitions, artistic doubts, and personal problems. Although they discuss such serious matters as the death of Foote's mother and Percy's battle with cancer, their letters are full of sly humor and good-natured ribbing. Jay Tolson has selected, edited, and annotated the letters of these two remarkable writers to shed light on their relationship and their literary careers.

"This is a wonderful book, essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and work of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy."—Washington Post

A magnificently orchestrated novel of two Depression-era Mississippi families which is "as modern as today's newpaper, as old as Mosaic law" (The New York Times) and renders the clash between North and South with a violence all the more shocking for its intimacy.