Here begins one of the most remarkable works of history ever fashioned. All the great battles are here, of course, from Bull Run through Shiloh, the Seven Days, Second Manassas to Antietam and Perryville in the fall of 1862, but so are the smaller and often equally important engagements on both land and sea: Balls Bluff, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island Ten, New Orleans, Monitor versus Merrimac, and Stonewall Jacksons Valley Campaignto mention only a few. And perhaps never before have these conflicts been so clearly, so dramaticallyand so excitinglypresented. The word narrative is the key, not only to this extraordinary books incandescence, but also to its truth. The story is told entirely from the point of view of the people involved in it. The listener not only learns what was happening in the North and South, on the political, military, diplomatic and home frontshe lives through the events as if he were there. This is the way it was, in its entirety, as far as Shelby Foote could discover it during years of exhaustive research.

Shelby Foote comes from a long line of Mississippians. He was born in Greenville, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina. During World War II he served in the European theater as a captain of field artillery. He has written six novels—Tournament, Shiloh, Love in a Dry Season, Follow Me Down, Jordan County and September September. He was awarded three Guggenheim fellowships in the twenty-year course of writing his monumental three-volume history The Civil War: A Narrative.

Grover Gardner, named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" by AudioFile magazine, has recorded more than five hundred audiobooks. He is the recipient of more than thirteen Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award. In addition to narrating, he has an active career as an actor and stage director. He lives in Washington, D.C.