The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume 2: Pea Ridge To The Seven Days War Means Fighting, Fighting Means Killing

The Civil War: A Narrative #2

by Shelby Foote

261 PAGES RED COVER MINT GIFT GIVING QUALITY BOOK!

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction

261 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1958

About the author

Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American novelist and a noted historian of the American Civil War, writing a massive, three-volume history of the war entitled The Civil War: A Narrative. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South. Foote was relatively unknown to the general public for most of his career until his appearance in Ken Burns's PBS documentary The Civil War in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was "central to all our lives."

Reviews

[Nick Lloyd]

Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862 was one of the most impressive in the history of warfare. With a force of 17,000, he was able to confuse, confine, and defeat three separate yankee armies, totaling 60,000 men, which drew much needed forces away from McClellan just as he was preparing to launch his attack on Richmond. Jackson explained his strategy thusly: "Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible. And when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible."

[Lee]

Greg's right: Foote is a very readable author.