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BOOK REVIEWS The Civil War: A Narrative. By Shelby Foote. (3 volumes. New York: Random House, 1958-1974. Pp. 840, 988, 1,106. $60.00.) Our historical profession of late has come under widespread attack because of a simple, growing and potentially fatal weakness. Historians, it is charged, have abandoned popular history. Turned around, the criticism is more biting. Professional scholars seemingly devote too much time to studies with limited readability. Too often historical works are ponderous if not pontifical; too often rebuttal and revision prevail at the expense of revelation; too often "scholarly studies" are designed for fellow historians and graduate students rather than for interested laymen and the buying public. In other words, a feeling persists that the study of history is slipping into a closed shop exclusively for the professionals . Such an occurrence would be disastrous for all concerned. The possibility of that transpiring in the Civil War field is unlikely, thanks in great part to a corps of writers who have so popularized the conflict between North and South as to make it far and above the nation 's favorite historical period. For example, Carl Sandburg, Clifford Dowdey, V. C. Jones and—especially—Bruce Catton have shown through numerous studies that history can be human, appealing at all levels, and enjoyable if the narrator can use a broad base and a gifted pen. These attributes have rarely been wielded in more brilliant fashion than by Shelby Foote; and now, with the completion of three huge volumes encompassing decades of labor, Foote hereby surges forth as one of the half-dozen major figures in Civil War writing. His trilogy is at once important and imposing. It offers a direct and competent challenge to Catton's Centennial History of the Civil War. Foote is a native of Mississippi who long ago adopted Memphis as his home. His literary fame first developed with five novels. Two of them—Follow Me Down and Shtloh—had Civil War themes. Then, in 1954, he was persuaded to embark on a full-scale narrative history of the war. Neither Foote nor the publisher realized at the time the dimensions that the project would ultimately take: twenty years of work on three widely spaced volumes containing a total of 1,500,000 words. Volume I, first published in 1958, begins the story with secession and preparations for war, skillfully carries the reader through the early crises, and concludes with the autumn, 1862, campaigns at Perryville and Antietam. Volume II, released in 1963, opens with preludes for battle at Prairie Grove, Stone's River and Fredericksburg. It provides 172 an in-depth study of the major and awesome 1863 contests: Vicksburg and Chattanooga in the West, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in the East. Some 900 pages later, it is March, 1864, and U. S. Grant arrives in Washington to take supreme command of the Union armies. Now the long-awaited and concluding third volume is at hand. It fulfills every expectation. Certainly it is the most dramatically written of the three installments, in part because it treats of the war's most dramatic months. Sherman slashes his way across the Deep South, and Sheridan blackens the Shenandoah, while Grant methodically pounds Lee into the immobility of the Richmond-Petersburg defenses. A short series of blows in the spring of 1865 and, for the South, a dream ends but a heritage begins. Comparing Foote with Catton is inevitable, and not merely because each is the author of a three-volume narrative history. The two men possess such writing talent as to put them in a special category to themselves . Both rely on printed sources—although Catton came to depend on research assistant E. B. Long for a wealth of manuscript material. Catton uses documentation; Foote disdains footnotes. Catton is a Northerner and Eastern-oriented. He concentrates on military matters and gives excellent discussions of a selected number of Civil War subjects . He writes in a moving, poignant prose style unequalled by any other current historian. Foote is a Southerner and Western-oriented. He is also interested primarily in army actions, and he is given to a far broader but somewhat more shallow coverage of the struggle. His...

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