[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 35 KB, 381x406, 9780394749136_p0_v2_s550x406.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13593464 No.13593464 [Reply] [Original]

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.

>> No.13593471

>>13593464
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

>> No.13593503

>>13593471
I watched some of his interviews that he did later on and they were even better. Foote was brilliant, bold, yet completely relatable.

>> No.13593566

>>13593464
Passable American Herodotus.

>> No.13593666

It's great as long as you remember that it's a narrative and not a history.

>> No.13593688

>>13593666
What should I read to get a better understanding of the history?

>> No.13593844

>>13593688
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is the best one volume book on the war.

>> No.13593852
File: 27 KB, 300x430, md19809174580[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13593852

>>13593464

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.

>>13593688

pic related. its a 60s history but its good stuff and still cited in courses today

>> No.13593864

>>13593844
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.

>> No.13593930

what's the difference between a history and a narrative bros

>> No.13593950

>>13593930
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.

>> No.13594747

>>13593930
Citations and sources. Foote doesn't list them.

>> No.13595781

>>13593464
Any other recommendations like Foote?

>> No.13595806 [DELETED] 

>>13593464
What civil war?

>> No.13596400

>>13595806
Nice b8

>> No.13596408 [DELETED] 

>>13596400
not quite but there are dozens of them.

>> No.13596507

>>13596408
Reading the thread would really help you then friendo.

>> No.13596514 [DELETED] 

>>13596507
I'd prefer not to. Bye.

>> No.13597242

>>13596514
And nothing of value was lost.

>> No.13597479
File: 528 KB, 1734x1145, ECWC TOPIC Reenacting PIC Clint Johnson with Shelby Foote.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13597479

>>13593464
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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/the-convenient-suspension-of-disbelief/240318/

>> No.13597499
File: 77 KB, 1000x1000, 1524180642741.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13597499

>>13593688
You sit down and read the OR volume by volume. all 128 of them.

>> No.13597514

>>13593464
Pro-Slavery trash.

>> No.13597525

>>13597514
[citation needed]

>> No.13597530

>>13595781
Churchill's Marlborough
CLR James' Black Jacobins
Hume's History of Great Britain
CV Wedgwood's 30 Years War
Schama's Citizens

>> No.13597537
File: 615 KB, 1504x2400, 9198KYxHWJL[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13597537

>>13597530

>> No.13597563 [SPOILER] 
File: 427 KB, 978x478, 1565141476578.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13597563

>>13593464
I bought it for $15 at a used bookstore

>> No.13597565

>>13593464
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.

>>13597514
God damn Yankees are insufferable

>> No.13597982
File: 420 KB, 1500x2381, 81wuDKoQp8L.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
13597982

>>13595781
The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It
https://www.loa.org/books/343-the-civil-war-the-first-year-told-by-those-who-lived-it

>> No.13599343

>>13597565
not to mention it changes the way you look at the entire southern war memorial controversy

>> No.13600451

>>13597537
this is excellent

>> No.13601293

Any good books on other civil wars as well?

>> No.13602545

>>13601293
see
>>13597530

>> No.13602829

>>13593566
Kek

>> No.13602852

Shelby Foote's Civil War is a classic, but you should know that it's practically a novel, not a strict work of history.

>> No.13603903

>>13602852
It serves many purposes.