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Rating: 
Summary: Understanding a Mind of the South
Review: A distinctively Southern voice explores a distinctively Southern figure in C. Stuart Chapman's portait of Shelby Foote. The book not only places Foote's work in context, it provides a literary glimpse into the South as a whole, not only during the Civil War era of Foote's best known works but the Civil Rights era as well. Foote clearly exemplifies the Burdens of Southern history -- both C. Vann Woodward's and Robert Penn Warren's varieties. Chapman gives us a fascinating look at a complicated man in his place and time.
Rating: 
Summary: Drivel
Review: C. Stuart Chapman's biography of the great historian of the Civil War is not worth purchasing. Chapman's great failing is to draw negative conclusions about Foote, as through Chapman's viewing of his subject through the lens of 21st century politics. A press secretary for the leftist Rep. Barbara Lee, Chapman's biography castigates the historian for having failed to offer himself up as a martyr during the Civil Rights struggles of the 50s and 60s. With such a "foundation" set in place, the edifice is not a pretty sight to see (or read).
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Summary: Chapman Scores with Insightful Review into Foote, the South
Review: Chapman's biography provides the reader with a fascinating insight into the complex mind of acclaimed author/historian Shelby Foote. Detailing the historical background and events that shaped Foote's upbringing and his ambitions as a novelist, Chapman draws clear connections between Foote's desire to reconcile his longstanding conceptions of aristocratic southern culture with the changing social and racial dynamics of the south during the civil rights era. This struggle is elucidated both within Foote's novels and in his three volume narrative of the Civil War.
This book is an absolute must read for anyone who has watched the PBS series on the Civil War or has read Foote's civil war narrative.
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Summary: The Life That Late He Led
Review: I have to disagree with the earlier, anonymous reviewer who says this book is drivel. I found it an enlightening and well-written book that delivers a non-partisan message, but it is written by someone who truly admires Shelby Foote. What's wrong with that? Foote is a wonderful historian, even though as many have said his volumes on the Civil War tell the story almost entirely as one of big battles and great men.
Chapman does not let his reverence for Foote's writings get in the way of telling a good story. And what a story! He came from the long-ago vanished South of the aristocrats, and along with his boyhood friend Walker Percy, who later became a celebrated novelist, the two of them tracked the changes in Southern society in their novels and other writings. Foote had his faults too, as Chapman notes ruefully: he exaggerated the depth of his friendship with the man he idolized, Nobel winner William Faulkner, who lived but a hundred miles away; he was a womanizer who just couldn't keep it in his pants; his relationship with his daughter Margaret, who became attached to the Seattle rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, was troubled to the point that he denied they were related; and his position on race relations wasn't a very activist one. Even his relationship with Percy was strained by the two men's seesawing careers and who was up. who was down, at any given moment. The Ken Burns thing happened at exactly the right time for Shelby Foote, and from now on, people would no longer be confusing him with Horton Foote--no relation.
Chapman's "LIFE" makes me curious to see the publication of "TWO GATES TO THE CITY," the novel on which Shelby Foote again and again dashed his hopes, an unconquerable manuscript that was worth its weight in tears. Maybe someday we will see some version of it. Until then, we have all his other books to read and re-read at leisure.
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Summary: Drivel
Review: Like many others I have been a fan of Footes since I read my first Foote novel Love in a Dry Season. When I discovered The Civil War: A Narrative I was even more impressed. I thoroughly enjoyed Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life.Like other reviewers, I especially liked the inclusion of Foote's fiction though more was read into it than probably should have. However, I think Chapman does a good job in bringing the hidden and private Foote to us. With all his foibles, Shelby Foote is destined to be remembered for generations. If you're a fan of history then you need to read Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life.
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Summary: More than a biography
Review: Shelby Foote is obviously a well known Civil War Historian, but the story told by C. Stuart Chapman makes Shelby Foote's legacy everlasting.
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