Shelby Foote, 1916-2005

I suspect most of my generation discovered Shelby Foote through Ken Burns, just like I did. The books themselves have always seemed too intimidating--like Proust's novels, his Civil War trilogy is something I've always fantasized about reading but never actually gotten around to opening. One of these days...Foote was born in Mississippi, so the Mississipi Writers Project covers him in detail, including a link to his 1994 Booknotes appearance. BookTV will rebroadcast another Foote interview, this one from 2001, as part of its Fourth of July weekend programming.