Buchanan Saw The Civil War's Beginnings

I've had a strange love affair with history. It's not really an affair, I suppose. For me, history is more like that girl from high school you run into every few years and wonder why you never hooked up with but it doesn't much matter now does it so instead you just have a pleasant lunch. History is a topic that I enjoy whenever I spend some time with it, but I've never gotten into it with any detail.

Much like friends whom I haven't seen in a while, my interest in historical periods is usually piqued by running into multiple references in a short period of time. Recently, that's been the American Civil War. Between playing For The People with Ken in Chicago, catching a Civil War documentary on the Discovery Channel the other night, and a conversation about my great-great-grandfather's military service, I realized it's time to do some reading.

Fortunately, I have a copy of Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative sitting on my shelf (as a result of an Amazon.com sale a few years ago). In college, my roommate Andy read it and commented on how good it was, so I'd always intended to read it. Yesterday I started to make good on my intention, reading the first few pages to get a sense of the style. I was immediately hooked. Foote's background was as a novelist and journalist, rather than as a historian, and he plays to his strengths. The 3000-page history starts with Jefferson Davis' resigning from the Senate after receiving word that Mississippi has seceeded. I knew basically nothing about Davis when I opened the book. Without boring me with facts and dates, Foote created a character whose context was accessible to me, and seventeen pages later I wanted to know more. It's going to be a long haul, but I'm pretty sure I made a good choice.