Fort Sumter to Perryville (The Civil War: a Narrative) - Hardcover

Foote, Shelby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394419480 ISBN 13: 9780394419480

Publisher: Random House USA Paperbacks, 1958

Synopsis

"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 better." —Atlantic

"Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail." —The New York Times Book Review

"The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact.The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled." —Walter Mills
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

Product Description:

Volume one follows the early stages of the war, from Jefferson Davis's resignation from the Senate in January 1861 to the battles of Antietam and Perryville in the autumn  of 1862. It examines the political manoeuvring as more and more states seceded from the Union and the seemingly inevitable spiral into bloody warfare. First published in 1958.  American-cut pages. 

Review:

"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

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House USA Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1958
• ISBN 10: 0394419480
• ISBN 13: 9780394419480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 848