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A review by iamjudgedredd
The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
The first in the trilogy, and my Odyssey into the American Civil War. I think if I hadn't done the audio version I may have been reading this for six months, so the audiobook is absolutely indispensable. The few rudimentary maps that are in the book are barely worth it, so I picked up The Civil War Battlefield Guide and am reading that concurrently for pictorial context.
The book itself is a <i>narrative</i> of the Civil War. You're not going to get all the facts, nor are you getting something unbiased. However, I'm trying to get the broad strokes and contexts of the war, campaigns, and battles so that I can know where and why a particular wargame titles falls. For that purpose this book has been excellent, and I look forward to the next two, even though they're even longer!
Foote's Southern biases are both clearly on display, and also overblown by his detractors. Perhaps that'll change in the later volumes, but his biases aren't subtle, but nor are they as egregious as I was lead to believe. However, all that being said, I'm okay with reading it knowing those biases because his style as a novelist makes this one of the least dry history accounts I've read in a long time.
Foote never met an anecdote he didn't love, and it shows, and he waxes poetic about many an aspect of the war, the south, and the commanders, but the narrative flows well, is decently paced all things considered and I look forward to completing my Odyssey.
The book itself is a <i>narrative</i> of the Civil War. You're not going to get all the facts, nor are you getting something unbiased. However, I'm trying to get the broad strokes and contexts of the war, campaigns, and battles so that I can know where and why a particular wargame titles falls. For that purpose this book has been excellent, and I look forward to the next two, even though they're even longer!
Foote's Southern biases are both clearly on display, and also overblown by his detractors. Perhaps that'll change in the later volumes, but his biases aren't subtle, but nor are they as egregious as I was lead to believe. However, all that being said, I'm okay with reading it knowing those biases because his style as a novelist makes this one of the least dry history accounts I've read in a long time.
Foote never met an anecdote he didn't love, and it shows, and he waxes poetic about many an aspect of the war, the south, and the commanders, but the narrative flows well, is decently paced all things considered and I look forward to completing my Odyssey.