"Stars in Their Courses"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Shelby Foote's book "Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign June-July 1863", which offers a historical account of the true events of the campaign in a novel format. The paper describes the author's technique of building the characters and setting the scenes, thereby giving the reader an appreciation of the human side of this period of history.

From the Paper:

"The major feature of Shelby Foote that impacts on the book is that he was both a historian and a novelist, with a special interest in the civil war. His previous book titled Shiloh was a fictional account of the civil war and was well-received. Because of the interest in this book, Shelby was requested to write a history of the civil war. His trilogy was the result, with Stars in Their Courses an excerpt from this trilogy. This background of Foote's explains his unique approach to writing the account. Foote combined his talents as a novelist and a historian to write an account that combined the best features of both. Foote was focused not only on the facts as a history book might list them, but on what the experience was like for the people involved. This resulted in the main aspect that sets the book apart from other historical accounts, the focus on not just describing the facts but telling a story."

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