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Shiloh

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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.

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

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

Published in 1952, Shelby Foote's fourth novel, attracted minimal public attention, but the critics and individuals in publishing took notice. One of them was Bennett Cerf of Random House who then afforded Foote the oppurtunity to write a short, one volume history of the Civil War. The rest, as they say, is history.

Back to the novel. Shiloh is simple enough, a relatively short novel which is simply about what the title says, a story of the April 1862 battle which produced the first battle where the casualties equalled that of Waterloo, some 47 years earlier. Foote does what Michael Shaara would do in his Pulitzer Prize winning Killer Angels nearly 20 years later; view the battle with altering Union and Confederate viewpoints. The difference is that when Foote has a historical character speak (like Ulysses Grant or Nathan Bedford Forrest) it's the words they were definitely known to use at the battle. Nothing on the real life characters is made up. Not that Killer Angels comes up short. It's arguably the greatest Civil War novel ever written, but you can see the blueprint of it in Shiloh.

I enjoyed this novel very much. It got me to want to read the three volume narrative. I think that this is probably better than most historical accounts of Shiloh. It's certainly more entertaining.

Told from the perspective of several of the participants (a Mississippi rifleman, a Minnesota artilleryman, one of N. B. Forrest's calvalrymen, an Ohio infantry squad leader), this first person narrative tells the tale of the first great cataclysm in the ACW's western theatre with convincing insight and emotion. The axiom of war - no strategy can survive contact with the enemy - was never proven truer than at Shiloh. Foote's narrative (this work undoubtedly proved to hone Mr. Foote's great skills for his monumental American Iliad - Civil War Narrative ) takes the reader to the most basic level of human experience. These are not troops - they are unique individuals, each with their own unique story to tell. Confusion, noise, smoke bombard overwrought senses - there are no God's eye view maps with red and blue arrows diagramming troop movements to try to give false sense to the chaos. Heroes and cowards, leaders and followers from North and South, crash into each other in a cacophony of violence near a Methodist meeting house named for Place of Peace, a few miles west of Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Albert Sidney Johnston's plan for the destruction of Grant's Army of Tennessee achieves limited success on the first day, only to be defeated on the second day after Buell comes up with the Union Army of Ohio. (Woe to the South at the loss of the great man Johnston, the South's first soldier.) The lives of each of the narrators are inextricably and forever linked by their experiences on 6 and 7 April (a Sunday and a Monday, lest we forget) 1862. What brought them together at that place, at that time; what were their thoughts and cares; why and for what and for whom did they fight, and how? These are basic, difficult questions to answer. Mr. Foote addresses each of these questions, for each individual, in a thoughtful manner, as a sort of personal history. This work is much over-looked and under-appreciated. It should stand next to Crane's 'Red Badge of Courage' in our national treasury of works of art, filed under: 'Fiction - American Civil War'.

The description of the battle's gore and the common soldiers' reaction to it make the battle come alive. The battle seems to literally unfold infront of you. If you have prior knowledge of the Civil War or are just getting into it buy this book.

Few authors can write narrative history on the same level as Shelby Foote. This book is a wonderful example of his abilities and deals with the battle of Shiloh through the eyes of several men on both sides of the conflict. His characters are not the generals on the field, rather they are common soldiers ranging from privates who have never seen battle up to a colonel (Forrest) -- people that don't have all the answers, others who are still searching for the questions. The wonderful thing about Foote's writing is his ability to make you feel like you were there without bogging the story down with too many numbers and statistics, but allowing the viewer a much deeper understanding of the events of the battle by giving us a glimpse through the eyes of those who were there. If you want stats, get an almanac, if you want a great story about one of the most interesting events in the American Civil War written by one of the best authors of our time, read this book!

Shelby Foote's Shiloh is a novel about a real Civil War battle told from the point of view of a few common soldiers, both northern and southern, who fought there. Because he chose to depict the action from these points of view, he limits what can be said of the big picture. If one can ignore that big picture, the book works very well at showing the reader what the experience must have been like for individuals caught up in different parts of the fight. Yet needing to provide some of that picture, Foote has each character present background on specific generals and their actions leading up to Shiloh. This exposition is, for the most part, pretty clumsy and simply detracts from the first person focus.

The problem I have with the book is that the reader doesn't get to know any of the characters very well and overall outcome of the battle is unclear. This is a really small book (just over 200 pages) and while the images are graphic and the characters accessable, the author just doesn't have the space to spread out and let the reader develop a real emotional response to these characters and their actions. Nor is he able to provide any perspective on the battle and what it means - even for the individual characters he has presented.

I think it helps to have read the section in his narrative history of the Civil War that deals with Shiloh. But this means that the novel doesn't really stand on its own. The reader must come equiped with prior knowledge or be left with questions that will require some research. Perhaps not bad, but I would have preferred a more comprehensive treatment - something more like Tom Wicker's Unto This Hour. That's just personal taste. Foote did what he intended and did it well. I can't help it if I just want more.

Shiloh is a gruesome tale of the hardships of war and the effect that war can have on individuals that are involved in it. The battle at Shiloh was, for some, just another battle, but for many it was their last. Shelby Foote does a fantastic job describing the scenes so that you can almost feel the heat from the lead whizzing past you. He does a wonderful job with disgusting details of the men that never returned home. I don't usually enjoy war novels because the ending is rather obvious, but for this single battle I was on the verge of flipping ahead just to find the outcome. I would recommend this book to anyone that wouldn't get grossed out by blood and death because Foote paints a clear picture with his fantastic detail. Again, if you usually don't like Civil War novels, you may find there is something about Shiloh that is different. It puts you on the battlefield, lets you feel both sides of the fighting and it is definitely worth checking out of the library!

In this beautifully written book, Shelby Foote takes the reader straight to the battlefield of Shiloh. By telling the story from the points of view of the participants, both North and South, there is a real sense of being present. The guns fire and the smoke and rain penetrate the entire area. We are wet and cold and scared and puzzled by the battle and how it moves. Any student of the Civil War should enjoy this story emensely.