Shelby Foote

Shelby Foote (1916-2005) was a American novelist and military historian. He is best known for his three-volume history of the Civil War entitled The Civil War: A Narrative . 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 relatively unknown to the general public for most of his career until his appearance on the PBS documentary “The Civil War” in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was central to the lives of all Americans. Foote passed away in 2005 (aged 88) and was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. His grave is beside the family plot of General Forrest.