A matchless account of the Battle of Gettysburg drawn from Shelby Foote s landmark history of the Civil War Shelby Foote s monumental three-part chronicle The Civil War: A Narrative was hailed by Walker Percy as an unparalleled achievement an American Iliad a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist. Here is the central chapter of the central volume and therefore the capstone of the arch in a single volume. Complete with detailed maps Stars in Their Courses brilliantly recreates the three-day conflict: It is a masterly treatment of a key great battle and the events that preceded it--not as legend has it but as it really was before it became distorted by controversy and overblown by remembered glory.