Shelby Foote, who cut such a courtly figure in Ken Burns's PBS series The Civil War, is an uncommonly graceful writer as well, and this careful study of the 1863 Gettysburg campaign assumes the contours of a classical tragedy. Foote positions readers on the field of battle itself, among swirling smoke and clattering grapeshot, and invites us to feel for ourselves its hellishness: "men on both sides were hollering as they milled about and fired, some cursing, others praying ... not a commingling of shouts and yells but rather like a vast mournful roar." Foote's fine book is history as literature, and a welcome addition to any Civil War buff's library.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shelby Foote's monumental three-part chronicle of the Civil War was hailed by Walker Percy as "an unparalleled achievement, an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist."

Drawn from Foote's acclaimed and massive The Civil War: A Narrative - the central chapter of the central volume, and therefore the capstone of the arch - this new addition to the Modern Library offers a matchless account of the epic Gettysburg Campaign. Complete with detailed maps, Stars in Their Courses brilliantly re-creates the three-day conflict: it is a masterly treatment of a key great battle and the events that preceded it - not as legend has it but as it really was, before it became distorted by controversy and overblown by remembered glory.

"Gettysburg... is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that, at last, what happened in the battle [can be understood]," said The Atlantic.

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