Editorial writers remember Shelby Foote

Press & Sun Bulletin (Binghamton, NY):

Today, the 142nd anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg, would be an apt occasion to find it in a library and let yourself get drawn in by Foote's narrative magic. It would be a fitting celebration of his life.

The Washington Post:

His eyes always looked real tired, like they had seen too many problems and not enough solutions. Or maybe too much Proust.

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The great-grandson of a Confederate calvary officer who fought at Shiloh, Foote brought a white Southerner's perspective to a chapter of history most often told by the Northern victors.

The Salt Lake Tribune:

Pick up one of the three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative, open to any page and begin reading. Before long, you will run across sentences, paragraphs, whole chapters that read like an epic novel of the first rank.

Los Angeles Times:

Despite his contributions to American literature, Foote never won the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award, although he was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994 when he was 78. Friends such as Carter suggested that the literary community didn't know what to think of Foote, who eluded easy categorization as either a historian or fiction writer.