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Chargement... The Civil War Trilogy Box Set: With American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative (Modern Library) (édition 2011)par Shelby Foote, Jon Meacham (Directeur de publication)
Information sur l'oeuvreThe Civil War Trilogy par Shelby Foote
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Appartient à la sérieThe Civil War: A Narrative (Original publication, Vol. 1-3 + American Homer) ContientAmerican Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and his classic "The Civil War: a narrative" par Jon Meacham The Civil War, Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Kernstown: First Blood - The Thing Gets Underway par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Civil War: A Narrative Pea Ridge to the Seven Days War Means Fighting, Fighting Means Killing (Volume 2) par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Civil War: A Narrative Second Manassas to Perryville The Sun Shines South (Volume 3) par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863 (Modern Library) par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Civil War, a narrative : Gettysburg to Vicksburg par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Civil War, a narrative : Mine Run to Meridian par Shelby Foote (indirect) The Civil War, a narrative : Petersburg to Savannah par Shelby Foote (indirect)
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. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)973.7History and Geography North America United States Administration of Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865 Civil WarClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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This is a mostly military history of the Civil War. Foote is mostly interested in battles and the people who fought them; battles, troop movements, terrain, strategy, tactics, logistics, people. With that in mind, this is a wonderful work and justly has attained iconic status. It's very well written and very exciting - in many places it reads like a novel and just sucks you in. If you want to know how the Civil War was fought, and you want to understand the men who fought it, this is the book for you.
What it is not:
Shelby Foote was not a historian. He was a novelist. The work is based on no new scholarship, and there are no great historical revelations or reevaluations. Foote uses mostly (almost exclusively?) secondary sources to compile his 'narrative', which covers the whole war, East and West. But he is not interested in many aspects of this time period: economics is essentially ignored; politics plays a subservient role to the 'narrative' of the war; and there is essentially no social history. Foote simply is not interested in slavery, the experience of slaves and ex-slaves, the social make-up of the South (or North), etc.
I bring this up because one of the essays in the companion volume of this set (American Homer) suggests that Foote is really just another White Southern Racist when it comes to his view of the War and what it was about: a little better concealed than some, but a racist none-the-less. I don't think this is fair. Other essays make the point that Foote was no racist, and was actually a liberal, LBJ-supporting democrat at a time when that was not popular in his area of the country. Because Foote essentially ignores blacks and slavery in these volumes does not, I think, mean that he somehow feels they weren't important. I think it just reflects his particular interest in matters military - troop movements, logistics, the happenstance of battle, and the personalities of men. And in conveying this, he was very successful.
So if you want a 'more complete' history of the time, you'll probably have to look elsewhere - probably many other elsewheres, as I can't imagine that any single work can cover all the important aspects of this incredibly turbulent time. And if you want up-to-the-date history, you'll probably have to look elsewhere too; Foote covers the 'same old' war stories that have probably been known since the late 1800s, it's just that he brings them all together in a very readable work. Certainly if you want to know about Reconstruction, don't look here. Foote, though he goes into little detail as comparatively little happened during the war itself, clearly holds the views that most historians of the 50s and 60s held, and he was not aware of the revolution in the historiography of that time period that that has occurred in the last 50 years.
In sum: if you want to know the story of the Civil War, this is for you. It's a great work from which to learn the basics of the war itself, and can be a springboard to further studies of specific aspects of the war and of the period. ( )