Foote, Shelby

Foote, Shelby (1916–  ) historian, novelist; born in Greenville, Miss. He attended the University of North Carolina (1935–37) and served in the Army (1940–44) and Marine Corps (1944–45). After establishing himself as a novelist with five well-received books, he spent twenty years crafting his epic, 2,934-page, three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative (1958, 1963, 1974). His even-handed but moving military account of the Civil War is generally considered history-as-literature at its best. He became familiar to television viewers as consultant and talking head on the Ken Burns series The Civil War (1990).