Here's sad news: Shelby Foote has passed away.
Novelist and historian Shelby Foote, whose Southern storyteller's touch inspired millions to read his multivolume work on the Civil War, has died. He was 88.Foote, a Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident, wrote six novels but is best remembered for his three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War and his appearance on the PBS series "The Civil War."
He worked on the book for 20 years, using a flowing, narrative style that enabled readers to enjoy it like a historical novel.
"I can't conceive of writing it any other way," Foote once said. "Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You can never get to the truth, but that's your goal."
"He was a Southerner of great intellect who took up the issue of the Civil War as a writer with huge sanity and sympathy," said Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, a friend and fellow Mississippi native.
Foote's soft drawl and gentlemanly manner on the Burns film made him an instant celebrity, a role with which he was unaccustomed and, apparently, somewhat uncomfortable.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" as No. 15 on its list of the century's 100 best English-language works of nonfiction.
Reading, he said, was as much a part of his work as writing.
After finishing his sixth novel, "September, September," in 1978, he took off three years to read.
He was a brilliant writer and a gifted raconteur -- there was no one better.
• The Mississippi Writers Page - Shelby Foote
• Booknotes - Shelby Foote (1994)