The Civil War: A Narrative

Author: Shelby Foote
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 852

Book Description
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

The Civil War: A Narrative

Author: Shelby Foote
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0394746228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1120

Book Description
This final volume of Shelby Foote’s masterful narrative history of the Civil War brings to life the military endgame, the surrender at Appomattox, and the tragic dénouement of the war—the assassination of President Lincoln. Features maps throughout. "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 “To read this chronicle is an awesome and moving experience. History and literature are rarely so thoroughly combined as here; one finishes this volume convinced that no one need undertake this particular enterprise again.” —Newsweek “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. . . . Written in the tradition of the great historian-artists—Gibbon, Prescott, Napier, Freeman—it stands alongside the work of the best of them.” —The New Republic “The most written-about war in history has, with this completion of Shelby Foote’s trilogy, been given the epic treatment it deserves.” —Providence Journal

Battle Cry of Freedom

Author: James M. McPherson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199726582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 946

Book Description
Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

Author: Peter Cozzens
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252028793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 660

Book Description
Volume 6 brings readers more of the best first-person accounts of marches, encampments, skirmishes, and full-blown battles, as seen by participants on both sides of the conflict. Alongside the experiences of lower-ranking officers and enlisted men are accounts from key personalities including General John Gibbon, General John C. Lee, and seven prominent generals from both sides offering views on "why the Confederacy failed." This volume includes 120 illustrations, including 16 previously uncollected maps of battlefields, troop movements, and fortifications.

The Civil War Trilogy

Author: Michael Shaara
Publisher: Civil War Trilogy
ISBN: 0345433726
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Presents a collection of three novels that present a fictionalized account of the battles of the Civil War.

Congress at War

Author: Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 045149444X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

Book Description
The story of how Congress helped win the Civil War-placing a dynamic House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict.

The Civil War

Author: Geoffrey C. Ward
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679755438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Based on the celebrated PBS television series about the men and women who lived through the cataclysmic trial of our nationhood—the complete text of the magisterial illustrated work of history that The New York Times hailed as "a treasure for the eye and mind." "The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things.... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads: the suffering, the enormous tragedy of the whole thing." —Shelby Foote, from The Civil War Now Geoffrey Ward's magisterial work of history is available in a text-only edition that interweaves the author's narrative with the voices of the men and women who lived through the cataclysmic trial of our nationhood: not just Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Robert E. Lee, but genteel Southern ladies and escaped slaves, cavalry officers and common foot soldiers who fought in Yankee blue and Rebel gray. The Civil War also includes essays by our most distinguished historians of the era: Don E. Fehrenbacher, on the war's origins; Barbara J. Fields, on the freeing of the slaves; Shelby Foote, on the war's soldiers and commanders; James M. McPherson, on the political dimensions of the struggle; and C. Vann Woodward, assessing the America that emerged from the war's ashes.

Gone

Author: Shelby Foote
Publisher: BelleBooks
ISBN: 9781611940039
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
On the eve of the Civil War's 150th commemoration, preservationist and photographer Nell Dickerson showcases the architectural heritage devastated by the War, mansions as well as cabins. Her photographs are accompanied by the text of "Pillar of fire," from the novel Jordan County by Shelby Foote.

The Last Full Measure

Author: Richard Moe
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
ISBN: 9780873514064
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
Since its publication, Richard Moe's The Last Full Measure has garnered a reputation as the definitive history of the First Minnesota Regiment and one of a handful of classic regimental histories of the Civil War. The First Minnesota Volunteers, the first regiment offered to President Lincoln after the fall of Fort Sumter, served in virtually every major battle fought in the eastern theater during the first three years of the Civil War. This is the story of the Army of the Potomac during that period: the initial enthusiasm dashed by sudden defeat at Bull Run; the pride at being shaped into an army by George McClellan and the frustration with his--and his successors'--inability to defeat Robert E. Lee; and, finally, the costly battle of Gettysburg, the decisive battle in which the First Minnesota played a crucial, and tragic, role. Drawing on a wide array of letters, diaries, and personal reminiscences, Moe tells the story anew through the experiences of the men who lived it. As James MacGregor Burns notes in his foreword, "Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, this work sticks close to the men in battle, and hence, like Tolstoy, the author keeps close to the human size of war." Praise for The Last Full Measure "Richard Moe, in this wonderfully told regimental history, manages to rescue that which Civil War studies so often neglects: the people."--Ken Burns, co-producer of The Civil War "Exceptional . . . a vigorous, haunting celebration of the Men."--The New York Times Book Review "Regimental history at its best."--Publishers Weekly "Highly recommended. . . . Thoroughly researched and excellently incorporating the soldier's-eye view of the war. . . . The best volume of Civil War historiography to appear in some time."--Booklist "A tribute to the men who helped save the Union. . . . If ever a regiment deserved to be remembered, it is the First Minnesota. . . . Richard Moe has a passion for history. He clearly also has a talent for writing it."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

Stars in Their Courses

Author: Shelby Foote
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0679601120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
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.