The Civil War
This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear. Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel. Includes maps throughout. "Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives…a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."—Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News "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 an historian should be a writer above all else." —Burke Davis "To read this great narrative is to love the nation—to love it through the living knowledge of its mortal division. Whitman, who ultimately knew and loved the bravery and frailty of the soldiers, observed that the real Civil War would never be written and perhaps should not be. For me, Shelby Foote has written it.... This work was done to last forever." —James M. Cox, Southern Review
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What Hacker News says
- The Civil War narrative Shelby Foote. It’s excellent.
- > I find that history contains many more surprises than authors can get away with in fiction.
There are however some brilliant authors that combine the two genres, sometimes more on the site of history, sometimes more on the site of fiction. Some random recommendations: Tolstoi: "War and Peace", Solzhenitsyn: "The Red Wheel" cycle, Yourcenar: "Memoirs of Hadrian", Brecht: "The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar", Foote: "The Civil War: A Narrative" (non-fictional narrative history).
- As an author I am encouraged by all the great responses here. In addition to writing a book a year I read about 50. My question for OP: How do you learn anything if you are not reading books? Sure, you can learn a lot about a subject online. When I write a book I spend about 6 months reading everything I can find (including books). Then I organize what I have learned and present it (I hope) in an easy to absorb manner. A reader can learn everything I know about a subject in 4-6 hours. Want to learn about the Cold War? Read Gaddis' seminal book on it. Want to learn about WWII? Read Winston Churchill's five book series that won the Nobel prize for literature? Civil War? Shelby Foote. If history is not your thing what about biography? There are biographies of practically every founder of great tech companies. (Jobs, Gates, Musk). How about ideas? Malcolm Gladwell (Tippingpoint), Michael Lewis (Mondeyball). Or maybe break into reading with fiction. Give yourself a present of the complete Lord of the Rings. If you liked the movies be prepared to love the books. If you hated the movies, no problem, the books are far better. OR science fiction. Read all of Heinlein's books for young adults. Start with Double Star then read Have Space Suit Will Travel. A Door Into Summer speaks to any engineer. Tunnel In the Sky is the classic survival story. When you are hooked on Heinlein read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; it only takes a chapter to get used to his interesting take on what English of the future will sound like.
I hope you are encouraged by all the great reasons listed in the rest of the comments. I for one live to read!
- Grover Gardner is a terrific narrator. If you’re into grand-scale, multi-volume histories, I highly recommend his readings of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative and Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
- I mean nothing ... violent or otherwise unpleasant by this, but it's really important to learn to let go. You pushed the rock up the hill for a while and now maybe it's somebody else's turn.
IMO, it's important to retain the capacity for grace in these things. Not least for your own sake, much less you're career.
I would read the parts of Shelby Foote's "Civil War" surrounding Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. It helped. Whatever else may be said of Lee, he was a master of grace under pressure.
- I've meant to compile this list, so you just inspired me. I wish the Durants had had the stamina for one more volume. I don't know much about the European revolutions of 1848 and would have like to read about that time from them. I already had read a lot of ancient Greek literature in translation as well as The Pentateuch, all the historical books of the Old Testament and the Gospels. Western Civilization springs from intellectual roots in Athens and Jerusalem, so any survey has to include that heritage. My degree is in Comparative Literature, so I put a lot of stock in origninal source material. The only languages I read are English and German, so everything is in English or translation except Faust, which IMO would be a waste in translation. The books I read for my survey (this was my survey to fill in my personal Bildungslöcke) are not all classics, and not even all to be recommended. It may appear surprisingly heavy on 20th century, but a lot of intellectual threads I thought I should understand better got kicked off in that century. In more or less chronological order by authorship or content (and I've probably forgotten a few):
Euclid The Elements
Arrian The Campaigns of Alexander
Garmonsway (trans.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Komroff (ed.) The Travels of Marco Polo
Haydn The Counter-Renaissance
Braudel The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, Vol I&II
Pascal The Thoughts
Spinoza The Ethics
Christianson In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton & his Times
Newton Opticks
Newton Principia (get the modern English translation by U.C. Press)
Hampson The Enlightenment
Voltaire Candide
Rousseau The Social Contract
Boswell Life of Johnson
Goethe Faust
Phillips The Cousins' Wars
Schom Napoleon Bonaparte
Heidler & Heidler Old Hickory's War
Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
de Toqueville Democracy in America
Darwin On the Origen of Species
Foote The Civil War: A Narrative
Maurois Disraeli
Twain Life on the Mississippi
Spector Admiral of the New Empire, The Life and Career of George Dewey
Cardwell The Norton History of Technology
Abbott Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions
Meyer & Brysac Tournament of Shaddows, The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia
Doughty Travels in Arabia Deserta
Lefevre The Golden Flood
Massie Dreadnought, Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War
Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Durant The Story of Philosophy
Cardozo The Nature of the Judicial Process
Schapiro The Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Kershaw Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris
Blemenson (ed.) The Patton Papers (1940-1945)
Hayek The Road to Serfdom
von Mises Human Action
Skinner Walden Two
Chambers Witness
Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Guevara Guerrilla Warfare
Cleaver Soul on Ice
Lacey The Kingdom, Arabia & the House of Saud
Durant The Lessons of History
Hackworth Lessons Learned, Vietnam Primer
Quigley Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
EDIT: Just remembered two more
Hobbes Leviathan
Locke Two Treatises of Government
