Is Shelby Foote's The Civil War worth reading? from what I've heard it seems to be the best thing on the civil war.
Is Shelby Foote's The Civil War worth reading? from what I've heard it seems to be the best thing on the civil war
Justin Turner
Aaron Perry
I want to read it because Foote seemed like a really cool dude in the PBS documentary on the Civil War
It would probably be the only work I'd read on the topic since I'm not terribly interested in the subject
Daniel Hall
I watched some of his interviews that he did later on and they were even better. Foote was brilliant, bold, yet completely relatable.
Dominic Russell
Passable American Herodotus.
Juan Cox
It's great as long as you remember that it's a narrative and not a history.
Levi Campbell
What should I read to get a better understanding of the history?
Christian Russell
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is the best one volume book on the war.
Daniel Richardson
Yes it is very good. The reason academics trash it is that it is probably the last work to retain the idea of the lost cause in style if not statement.
pic related. its a 60s history but its good stuff and still cited in courses today
Brody Martin
also a narrative
here are some more from the The Teaching Company:
Hattaway, Herman, and Jones, Archer. How the North Won: A Military History of the CivilWa r. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. Reprinted in paperback. The best one-volume military history of the Civil War, this study pays rigorous attention to all theaters and places campaigns and battles in a broad political context.
Paludan, Philip Shaw. “A People’s Contest”: The Union and the Civil War, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. The best one-volume treatment of the nonmilitary side of the Northern war experience, this volume emphasizes how the conÀ ict pushed the North toward modern nationhood.
Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Reprinted in paperback. A superior one-volume history of the subject, well researched and well written
A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953. The Pulitzer Prize-winning third volume of Catton’s history of the Army of the Potomac.
Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Reprinted in paperback. The best one-volume life of Lincoln, written by a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Asher Thomas
what's the difference between a history and a narrative bros
Michael Lopez
I love narrative histories, but they are basically the history placed in a story context and the historian is the storyteller. They may use literary devices to give characters depth, use their perceptions of eyewitness accounts to create scenes, and are allowed a certain freedom to create drama and setpieces. Foote describing Lee after Gettysburg or the final days of Vicksburg is riveting.
A history will not seek this. It will be a dry discussion of facts with the reader, citing sources and often creating tangents. It doesnt care if it spoils stuff for you. It provides outside scholarly analysis of events. It may veer into historiography at the climax of events, or discuss the archaeological findings. It will include charts and timelines and critiques.
Blake Richardson
Citations and sources. Foote doesn't list them.
Hunter Miller
Any other recommendations like Foote?
Kevin Williams
What civil war?
Mason Jones
Nice b8
Joshua Williams
not quite but there are dozens of them.
Adrian White
Reading the thread would really help you then friendo.
Ayden Ramirez
I'd prefer not to. Bye.
Evan Richardson
And nothing of value was lost.
Noah Jackson
I love this man.
>In a 1997 interview with Donald Faulkner and William Kennedy, Foote stated that he would have fought for the Confederacy, and "what's more, I would fight for the Confederacy today if the circumstances were similar. There's a great deal of misunderstanding about the Confederacy, the Confederate flag, slavery, the whole thing. The political correctness of today is no way to look at the middle of the nineteenth century. The Confederates fought for some substantially good things. States' rights is not just a theoretical excuse for oppressing people. You have to understand that the raggedy Confederate soldier who owned no slaves and probably couldn't even read the Constitution, let alone understand it, when he was captured by Union soldiers and asked, 'what are you fighting for?' replied, 'I'm fighting because you're down here.' So I certainly would have fought to keep people from invading my native state."
en.wikipedia.org
theatlantic.com
Charles Bell
You sit down and read the OR volume by volume. all 128 of them.
Colton Davis
Pro-Slavery trash.
Ethan Wood
[citation needed]
Jace Clark
Churchill's Marlborough
CLR James' Black Jacobins
Hume's History of Great Britain
CV Wedgwood's 30 Years War
Schama's Citizens
Noah Perry
William Gray
I bought it for $15 at a used bookstore
Liam Robinson
It should be required reading for all Americans. Not memeing. Most burgers don’t understand that the Civil War, more than any other event in our history, fundamentally shaped and changed our nation forever—and mostly for bad reasons too. The moral issue of slavery wasn’t even an issue until the Vatican and Britain were flirting with the idea of helping the Confederacy—at which point Lincoln used slavery as a means to keep foreign powers out of the war.
God damn Yankees are insufferable
Robert Wright
The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It
loa.org
Matthew Lopez
not to mention it changes the way you look at the entire southern war memorial controversy
Adrian Robinson
this is excellent
Juan Torres
Any good books on other civil wars as well?
Wyatt Perry
see
Joshua Perry
Kek
Jonathan Price
Shelby Foote's Civil War is a classic, but you should know that it's practically a novel, not a strict work of history.
Samuel Hill
It serves many purposes.