The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the Depression, and when I came of … - Shelby Foote

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The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the Depression, and when I came of age, I was involved in the Second World War. That sounds a pretty horrible series of events. They seem perfectly natural to me. I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. And the Second World War was a wonderful thing to be with. It's now called "the Good War." We usually referred to it as "this damned war." We didn't think of it as a good war. We did believe it was fought in a good cause.

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About Shelby Foote

Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. (17 November 1916 – 27 June 2005) was an author and historian of the American Civil War. A native of Greenville, Mississippi, Foote left college early to enlist in the US Army in 1940. [A question here--if he was born in 1916, he wold have been24 in 1940. Did he go to college later than most kids?] After the war he worked as a journalist, and wrote historical fiction, before becoming a historian specialising in the Civil War period. He wrote a 3000 page three volume history, and became well known to the public from his appearance in Ken Burns' documentary series The Civil War (1990).

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. Shelby Dade Foote
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Additional quotes by Shelby Foote

When I was a hardworking, pistol-hot writer, I was unknown. Now that I’m a tired old man, they start hollerin’ how good I am. I’m not going to analyze what that all means. I’m just determined not to let it turn my life into something I don’t want it to be.

Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

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