Amazon.com description: Product Description: 'Tournament' is Shelby Foote's first novel, published originally by Dial Press in 1949. Summa's reprint includes an exclusive preface by the author concerning his literary deveopment and the genesis of 'Tournament' and an introduction by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., the dean of American literature criticism. 'Tournament' is a brilliant novel of the post-Civil War South, replete with Proustian and Faulknerian overtones. Many of the characters that appear in subsequent novels by Shelby Foote come onto the scene for the first time in this work. It is a must acquisition for every fan of Shelby Foote.