>>24545524
The Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote

It reads like literature, emotive and with a focus on the characters, the narrative and the dramatic momentum of the war. The elegant writing makes scenes stick in my mind long afterwards, and I like to just open it up to random passages to revisit the atmosphere now and again. He researched religiously and took long years writing it, but refused to give citations because it would "break the spell" of making the war an epic narrative that later generations could draw upon.