Winston Groom is the author of twenty previous books, including Forrest Gump, Conversations with the Enemy (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Shiloh 1862, and The Generals. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division and lives in Point Clear, Alabama.
“A fantastic read. . . . A serious cut above previous works on the
subject. Reading Vicksburg 1863 is like spending a couple of
evenings alone with Groom as he tells you a story dear to his
heart. It is intimate, quirky, utterly fascinating and, ultimately,
deeply personal. . . . Groom has established himself unquestionably
as heir to the late Shelby Foote with this commanding, thoroughly
entertaining narrative account.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Brilliantly described. . . . Rarely has the story of such a
lengthy and complicated campaign been told with such clarity and
grace. . . . Groom’s book is full of such authentically rendered
excitement. . . . He proves again that facts skillfully woven can
be more moving than the products of the busiest imagination. . . .
With Vicksburg, 1863, he has fully arrived as a narrative
historian.”
—The Washington Post
“Groom’s mastery of plot and storytelling leaves him inordinately
well-disposed to piece together the tangled mass of major battles
and peashooter skirmishes . . . that made up the Vicksburg
campaign. . . . “If Vicksburg seems like a very old story to tell,
Groom’s lively account has a frighteningly contemporary sheen.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“Unique. . . . Offers fresh insights on the human costs of the war
and what it meant to the nation. . . . Groom brings the novelist’s
touch to history, personalizing characters . . . in an easily
relatable way for the average reader.”
—The Associated Press
“A masterful telling of the pivotal Civil War siege and
battle.”
—New York Post
“Illuminating. . . . Groom can help any reader understand and
appreciate that when North met South in combat the issues weren’t
one-dimensional and the outcome wasn’t a foregone conclusion.”
—The Vicksburg Post
“A galvanizing and harrowing account. . . . Relying on southern
sensibilities, historical scrupulousness and a novelist’s feel for
a good yarn, Groom plunges into this cauldron with a presentation
that gives full vent to the cost in human lives and the enormous
stakes for both sides.”
—The New Jersey Star-Ledger
“Groom’s command of the military facts, and his extraordinary
mixture of vignettes big and small, brings this distant, chaotic,
and shockingly violent episode to life.”
—The Weekly Standard
“With [Vicksburg, 1863] Groom attains the stratospheric narrative
heights heretofore enjoyed by such popular-history masters as Bruce
Catton, Shelby Foote and James M. McPherson. His pacing is so good,
his attention to detail so riveting, and his flair for action
writing so pitch-perfect that the reader is utterly absorbed and
inexorably swept along. . . . There have been many books about
Vicksburg, but none better than this.”
—Mobile Press-Register (Alabama)
“Civil-war buffs will be most interested in Winston Groom’s
contribution to the contentious debate on whether General Joseph
Johnston, the Confederate commander in the West, could and should
have done more to relieve the defender of Vicksburg, General John
Pemberton. Others will be struck more by the archaic nature of the
Vicksburg campaign. The tactics of the besiegers and the sufferings
of the besieged bring to mind medieval, or even Roman, times rather
than mid-19th-century America.”
—The Economist
“Winston Groom bids fair to assume the mantle of the late Shelby
Foote as a most eloquent and moving storyteller of the Civil War.
His prose is unbeatable . . . while his pen portraits of
individuals are crisp and incisive. The feel and smell and hardship
of soldiers and civilians alike in a siege are all here in
Vicksburg, 1863.”
—William C. Davis, author of Look Away! A History of the
Confederate States of America
“An exciting, balanced account of what may have been the most
decisive campaign of the Civil War. . . . It is all there—bravery
and cowardice, competence and folly, fear and endurance, all with
the constant, imponderable undertow of dumb luck, good and
bad.”
—Stephen Fox, author of Wolf of the Deep
“[Groom] has delivered another tour de force. . . . Beautifully
written, he places us in the minds and hearts of the citizens and
soldiers who lived the battles and endured the hardships of war in
the besieged city. This is a must read!”
—Frank J. Williams, Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
and founding Chair of The Lincoln Forum
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