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Shelby Foote, 1916-2005

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One of the greatest narrative historians ever has gone to that Great Gettysberg in the Sky.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote, who became a national celebrity explaining the war to America on Ken Burns' 1990 PBS documentary, has died at 88.

Foote died Monday night, said his widow, Gwyn.

The Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident wrote a stirring, three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War, as well as six novels.

"He had a gift for presenting vivid portraits of personalities, from privates in the ranks to generals and politicians. And he had a gift for character, for the apt quotation, for the dramatic event, for the story behind the story," said James M. McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War historian. "He could also write a crackling good narrative of a campaign or a battle."

If you have not read his Civil War series, you should -- even if it takes you three years like it did me.

One of my favorite quotes from Foote is this:

"There is something that is too often overlooked of a far serious nature than the usual business about drawls and accents and overalls. And that is we truly, having lost a war, know a tragedy that other Americans do not know or have not experienced. Certainly not until Vietnam. We know what it means to lose a war. But what we have gained from it is of more value than the people who won the war got from it. We got a true sense of tragedy ..."

I guess it takes a Southerner to understand a Southerner.

RIP, Shelby Foote.