re: #464 Fourth Football of the Apocalypse

In other interesting news, I finally completed Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy, all via audio CD, with Grover Gardner the narrator.

It’s quite a fascinating level of detail, and I learned a lot about different battles and various generals. Pretty amazing the writers who can pull all this information together and transform it into narrative form.

That being said, it’s an account heavily weighted towards the South. Not so much the tone of it, just the amount of material dedicated to telling about its generals and people. The tone is pretty even keel, even though Foote’s sympathies seem rather clear. I got pretty winded of it towards the end and skipped through some sections.

Anyway, I’ve probably heard as much about the Confederacy as I care to for a while and feel a need to delve back into some Lincoln- Grant-Sherman-Sheridan material to compensate.

The narrative reflects the general run of civil war historical literature at the time Foote did his research. I could directly connect some of his prose to corresponding sections of a book of Gettysburg at that time. The general more union-centric counterpoint to Foote would be to read Bruce Catton’s trilogy from roughly the same time period.

If you want a one volume treatment of the war and causes MacPherson’s _Battle Cry of Freedom_ is probably your best bet. And there are probably enough ACW readers here you could get recommendations regarding the various facets and campaigns if you are interested in any particular event.