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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
TOUCHING THE ELEPHANT, VOICES IN BATTLE,
By
This review is from: Shiloh: A Novel (Paperback)
This is as much a cutting edge literary endeavor as it is a civil war novel. Slightly before the Civil War started a parable of four blind men touching different parts of the elephant and then arguing over what they saw was brought to Europeans by Rudyard Kipling. Out of the same concept perhaps, some of the Confederate soldiers referred to being in combat as "Seeing the Elephant". With this story Shelby Foote endeavored to avoid giving us the chessboard overview of the battlefield and instead offer us glimpses of what the indvidual participants might have seen. The result is a too fast and barely coherent a glimpse into the action on the battlefield, which is perhaps even more than what an average combatant perceives from the battle in which they take part. It is not for nothing that terms such as "Fog of war" and "Controlled chaos" have been invented by mankind in describing battle.Because of that, much of the criticism that Shelby Foote draws for this novel is undeserved. In his own words, the story is not about people, it's about the Battle of Shiloh. The real beauty of this is that Foote has painstakingly researched the lives of its participants and the book is more about their lives than it is about troop movements on the battlefield. Few people realize that terms such as "Aircraft" and "Electric Current" are contemporaries of the Civil War, and Shelby Foote does an admirable job illustrating the modernity of the thinking of the Civil War's participants in words and deeds that historically occured during the battle of Shiloh with such skill, that we take it for granted that those characters are just like us, the modern people. The book's only shortcoming is that it lacks a good sense of geography and terrain. The woods and the peach orchards and the sense of place are mere abstractions, as are distances and the surroundings. Because of that we tend to get lost in the biographies of the people rather than on the battlefield about which the novel was written.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Neither Gods nor Generals,
By Theo Logos (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shiloh: A Novel (Paperback)
The essence of Shelby Foote's book Shiloh is summed up by one of his narrators, Corporal Blake, who speaking to the men in his squad says,"books about war were written to be read by God Almighty, because no one but God ever saw it that way. A book about war, to be read by men, ought to tell what each of the twelve of us saw in our own little corner. Then it would be the way it was - not to God but to us." Shiloh is definitely a "man's-eye" view of the battle - every chapter consisting of first person accounts from various narrators, Union and Confederate, telling only of what transpires in their own little corner. This proves to be an effective device for dramatically portraying the battle as it was experienced by those who fought it rather than giving the perspective of the historians who study it.
Foote avoids not only the omniscient perspective, but that of the commanders as well; equally rejecting God and generals in telling his tale. The narrators that Foote uses in his story are the young men who fought the battle. They are all either common soldiers or young junior officers with no voice in the planning of strategy or authority to direct its execution. Because of Foote's choice of narrators, it proved difficult to include certain background information about the commanders of the armies that fought the battle. Rather than leave this information out, Foote included it in expositional passages that sounded forced and awkward coming from his young narrators. This is the only flaw in an otherwise outstanding "boots on the ground" tale of war, and is easy to forgive when balanced against the books many virtues. Theo Logos
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome descriptions and accuracy,
By Derek Brass (Georgia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shiloh: A Novel (Paperback)
You can tell Shelby Foote really did his research before sitting down to write this book. The book alternates point of view from chapter to chapter from the Confederacy to Union soldiers. Throughout the civil war novel, their are letters from the soldiers to their wives which Foote obtained from old manuscripts. In my opinion, even the weather adds to the accuracy of the novel. The major turning point of this book is when Johnston of the Confederacy is killed in battle which led to the advance of lost territory by the Union. If you feel you like you still need more info. on this thrilling novel please visit my website at the following
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