The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian [Paperback]

Shelby Foote (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 1986

"This, then, is narrative history—a kind of history that goes back to an older literary tradition.... The writing is superb...one of the historical and literary achievements of our time." —The Washington Post Book World

"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better." —Atlantic

"Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail." —The New York Times Book Review

"The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled." —Walter Mills

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A stunning book, full of color, life, character and a new atmosphere of the Civil War, and at the same time a narrative of unflagging power. Eloquent proof that a historian should be a writer above all else. I predict that Foote's three volumes will be a turning point in the writing of Civil War history."

-- Burke Davis

"This first of a three-volume history of the Civil War is so good that the reader is apt to mistrust his instant and overpowering enthusiasm. If the subsequent works in the series are its equal, novelist Shelby Foote will have written one of the finest histories ever fashioned by an American."

-- Wirt Williams, Los Angeles Times

"The quality is high; the tone, cool and objective, yet lighted with excitements.... Foote's narrative style is first-rate, vivid, and refreshing. When the trilogy is completed it will most likely stand as the most thorough history of the-Civil War yet done."

-- Hudson Strode

"Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters ... a stirring and stupendous synthesis of history."

-- Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News

"A great, hulking book ... great in quality as well as in size. Not only does the author achieve a wonderful breadth of coverage, he also recounts the events of the war with an impressive depth of understanding. His book is a major achievement in the literature of the Civil War: good research superbly written."

-- Richard B. Harwell, Chicago Sun Tribune --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

FREDERICKSBURG TO MERIDIAN

"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better."--Atlantic

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039474621X
• ISBN-13: 978-0394746210
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,670 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Foote is a master storyteller, October 14, 2010

By 

Shannon Gaw (Roswell, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian (Paperback)

"The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2, From Fredericksburg to Meridian" is Foote's second book in his magnum opus and considered by some sources to be the best. I began with Volume II because of my interest in 1863, Stones River, Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and all those subjects received a very detailed treatment. I remember perusing the book in the early 1980s and wanted to read it, but was intimidated by its size. After all, it was only one of three 2.5" thick books in the series. After watching (and re-watching) Foote's interviews in Ken Burns' "The Civil War", I became so fond of the man that I bought the whole set, both in print and in audio. The books have a permanent spot in my nearest bookshelf and the audio is in a permanent playlist on my iPhone.

Volume II begins with Jefferson Davis' 1863 trip around the Confederacy to rally his constituents, and takes us through the battles of Fredericksburg, Stones River, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. We lose Stonewall Jackson, see the rise of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Ulysses Grant, and witness the fall of Rosecrans and Bragg. It does not just focus on the well-known activities of the Army of the Potomac vs. the Army of N.VA, but interposes scenes from all theaters of the war as well, as the other branch of service (Navy). It's not just a military history, as we learn of such items as the infighting in both White Houses, international ramifications of the War, and the dysfunctional inflationary economies and riots in Southern cities like Richmond and Northern cities like New York.

Foote is a master storyteller and his riveting and personal accounts may make the reader forget they are reading non-fiction history. It's the kind of book one can open at any page and start reading (or listening). It is long and detailed, but not so much by mentioning every regiment and commander as other books do, but rather by just telling the whole story from various angles.

There were a few items that the reader may find frustrating.

* Foote received criticism that he did not document with footnotes. As a recreational reader, this did not bother me so much, as there was plenty of detail within the body of the book itself.
* He could have made better/more use of maps. I typically give this criticism of most CW books.
* The narrative is long at nearly 1000 pages. That is not bad in itself, but it jumps around within chapters. In that sense, it's like reading a series of hypertext web pages. Only one chapter, "Stars in their Courses", is contiguous in subject. It covers Gettysburg and was actually later released in a smaller book of the same name.

These are small nits in my opinion; this book is a masterpiece. As Lee confided to Longstreet in the early chapters, "It is well that war is so terrible... We should grow too fond of it".

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Foote's Legacy, March 9, 2007

By 

Charles D. Fletcher - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian (Paperback)

He has left us with a view of our Civil War, that was never captured before, and has not been since. This volume begins with the horrific carnage at Fredericksburg and the crises in Lincoln's cabinet in the aftermath. As in Vol. 1, Foote transitions smoothly from politics to battlefield, and from the war in the East to the campaigns in the West, and stays highly readable every page of the way.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Iliad of American agony, June 9, 2002

By 

William E. Adams (Sorrento, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. II: Fredericksburg to Meridian (Hardcover)

I read all three volumes of the great Shelby Foote's Civil War narrative in the 80s. This volume is yet another of his logically well-integrated, dramatic trio on that war and speaks a soft/loud pianoforte of war from the Southern perspective. It contains many a large gulp of its often hesitantly bitter, prolonged agony from the bloody cup of setbacks and disappointments on both sides of the conflict. Had Foote given us the same mysterious energy without frequently caricaturing the North to glorify the South, it, in my estimation, would've transcended all such history, narrative or not, in the long fog of peace and romancing of the war. Yet it's THE monumental work, forcefully contradicting the rule that only victors write definitive histories of war. I hope its brilliant histrionics are never misused by historical revisionists, or deter America from completing the Spartacan dream of abolishing all vestiges of involuntary servitude.