Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist.
[1] Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of
The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the
American Civil War.
[2]
With geographic and cultural roots in the
Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the
agrarian planter system of the
Old South to the Civil Rights era of the
New South. Foote was little known to the general public until his appearance in
Ken Burns's
PBS documentary
The Civil War in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was "central to all our lives".
[3]