Shelby Foote's Civil War Trilogy

I just finally finished tackling the massive three-volumes of Shelby Foote's narrative of the Civil War. It took three months, about the same when I read the trilogy the first time ten years ago. Foote was such a tremendous writer, he brings the war alive. With all the stellar volumes about the American Civil War, it's no small compliment to say that Foote's trilogy is pretty much certainly the standard as the overview of the whole war. Bruce Catton's civil war trilogy comes close and McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is the best one-volume history of the war, but Shelby Foote's is the monumental achievement.