The Civil War Trilogy Box Set: With American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative (Modern Library)

A handsome boxed set of Shelby Foote’s three-volume masterpiece, selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time—a comprehensive, extensively researched history of the Civil War, accompanied by American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic Civil War

“The writing is superb . . . one of the historical and literary achievements of our time.”—The Washington Post Book World

In 1954, Random House publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned southern novelist Shelby Foote to write a short, one-volume history of the American Civil War. Thirty years and a million and a half words later—every word having been written out longhand with nib pens dipped into ink—Foote published the third and final volume of what has become the classic narrative of that epic war.

Foote’s tremendous, sweeping narrative of the most fascinating conflict in our history—a war that lasted four long, bitter years, an experience more profound and meaningful than any other the American people have ever lived through—begins with Jefferson Davis’s resignation from the United States Senate and Abraham Lincoln’s departure from Springfield for the national capital. It is these two leaders, whose lives continually touch on the great chain of events throughout the story, who are only the first of scores of exciting personalities that in effect make The Civil War a multiple biography set against the crisis of an age.

Four years later, Lincoln’s second inaugural sets the seal, invoking “charity for all” on the Eve of Five Forks and the Grant-Lee race for Appomattox. Here is the dust and stench of war, a sort of Twilight of the Gods. The epilogue is Lincoln in his grave, and Davis in his postwar existence—“Lucifer in Starlight.” So ends a unique achievement—already recognized as one of the finest histories ever fashioned by an American—a narrative that re-creates on a vast and brilliant canvas the events and personalities of an American epic: the Civil War.

Alongside Foote’s brilliant history, this boxed set contains American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic Civil War: A Novel, edited by and with an introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham, and including essays by Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Anette Gordon-Reed, and others.

Shelby Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina. During World War II he served in the European theater as a captain of field artillery. In the period since the war, he wrote five novels: Tournament, Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season, Shiloh, Jordan County, and September, September. He was awarded three Guggenheim fellowships.