Lee Morgan is visiting his cousin in Evansdale, North Carolina. After supper, he decides to take a walk. While walking down a dirt road, he hears the sound of a man's voice. Curious, he walks in the direction of the voice. Standing in a circle behind the brushes are several Klansmen. In the center on the ground is a black man pleading for his life and Lee watches in disbelief as the Klansmen castrate and shoot the man. He cannot think rationally and lets his anger control the situation. With clenched fist he hollers, "Saw what you did." The Klansmen look up and start to shoot at Lee. Lee starts to run for his life.

In this daring tale of racial tension and injustices during the Jim Crow era, Lee is often on the run. Lee is a tall, dark and rugged man, who is experiencing difficult times in his life. Some of the white people fear him and others admire him, but getting angry is his worst enemy.

Lee falls in love with Lena a beautiful Indian who captures his heart. Although he meets other women it's Lena that he marries. Together they create a good life until one event threatens to put Lee on the run again.

Run Lee Run could have been a better novel if there was more emphasis on how the story flowed. The script moved so fast and left you with feeling that you had missed something. Roberts has the gift of creating an excellent storyline. His writing is like listening to a story told by your grandmother or mother.

I found this novel to be one of great interest. The storyline is one that you won't forget. I recommend that you read this novel. Roberts has written a sequel to Run Lee Run and it's called The Early Bird Gets the Worm, which will be out soon. -- Reviewed by Dorothy Cooperwood

I find this book fairly understandable, easy to follow and a bit of interesting with good pictures!

There have been several books published within the past 20 years that have a revisionist take on the Civil War career of Robert E. Lee, questioning the widely held belief that he was the greatest commander of the American Civil War (if not all American history). By and large, nearly all of them overstate their case and some are downright ridiculous. While this book is one of the better ones, it is not without many of the same flaws common to all the others.

Bevin's biggest virtues are that he usually gives Lee credit when it is due and also makes a good case for many of the alternate decisions and maneuvers that he suggests would have won bigger results for the Confederacy. I found the chapters on the Seven Days battles and the 1864 Overland campaign to be especially good. He points out many cases where Lee should have backed away instead of wasting his strength with costly frontal assaults (though combativeness was the trademark of the whole Confederate Army, not just its most famous general). Also, Bevin does not indulge in any shameful character assassination that other critics of Lee have employed. Lee's final decision to reject guerrilla warfare in favor of national reconciliation is justly praised, as well.

Unfortunately, Bevin does not remain completely objective throughout and many of his proposals were simply not realistic at the time or would have depended too much on the North reacting exactly as he predicted. I think that the argument that the South should have fought purely a defensive war overestimates the Southern population's morale while underestimating the resolve of the Federal Government. The North, too, could have adopted a strategy of avoiding large-scale offensive battles, opting instead to rely on the "Anaconda" plan to run its course. The South became more and more isolated by the Union blockade as time went on, and the war against the Southern population would have grown in intensity, as well (conceivably extending to arming and encouraging slave revolts, which would have been inevitable as economic conditions continued to deteriorate). I believe that Lee had it right, more or less, in trying to win Southern independence by taking the fight to the enemy and inflicting successive defeats on the Union Army. Just waiting it out played into the North's economic and maritime strength and would not have worked in the long run.

To sum it up, this is a very readable and often well-reasoned critique of Lee's battlefield decisions. However, it often fails to sufficiently take into account many of the harsh realities faced by the Confederacy in general and its armies in particular.

I liked this book, although it got a little too detail oriented in a couple spots, I learned alot from this book about Robert E. Lee's overall character and strategy.

I found this book to be very interesting. I couldn't lay it down until I was finished reading it. It was the first Civil War book I have read, and it is a good foundation for the others I have read since.

Alexander uses a lot of detail on tactical moves that Lee and Jackson used. Lee and Jackson are both praised in the book, and Lee is criticized for his mistakes. Alexander does not criticize Lee's character, but only some tactical moves that he made on the battle field. I know hindsight is 20/20, but Alexander gives Lee is dues. Overall, this was an excellent book and fun to read.

Mr Hallsey is too generous is his review of this book. McKenzie would have us believe this is a serious treatment of a serious issue. Wrong! McKenzie fails miserably to support his assertions with probably this and probably that chapter after chapter. To re-examine Lee's career, we really do not need a play-by-play of every battle. A direct approach to Lee's faults and detailed evidence of such would have served the purpose. Instead the reader is given a flimsy statement and referred to footnotes. One footnote citation is not even listed with the footnotes - I had to check the bibliography to find the full title of that reference. Lee's victories at Second Manassas and Chancellorsville are taken from him by this faux historian while he fawns over the immortal Jackson. Historical context is ignored or twisted in McKenzie's stories of Confederate Command failures and the retention of Lee in command over his own proposed resignations. Additionally, the book has inexcusable typos - the aftermath of the Seven Days left the armies EAST of Richmond, not west. The publisher, Hippocrene Books, should be ashamed of itself to put out this shoddy product at such an outrageous price.

Comical is the best word to describe John D. McKenzie's book Uncertain Glory. It should be considered a work of creative fiction and not a serious history book. The research is shallow, the review is cursory and assumptions are never fully developed. The accuracy in the book is also in question since on page 254 Mr. McKenzie has the battle of the crater taking place on "July 30, 1964." This book could have been a remarkable treatise had any serious time been spend exploring artillery placement, troop deployment and southern economic conditions. It would have also been useful to use the opinions of modern military experts to bolster his position. Having studied the Civil War seriously for many years, I find the book to be bankrupt of any serious historical fact (that has not already been discussed) is not worth serious academic consideration.

Southern historians, the author feels, have had it all their way, denigrating Union leadership and enshrining Lee in a mythos of superb generalship he doesn't deserve.
In this trenchant analysis of the Confederate defeat, McKenzie's criticisms of Southern arrogance, disorganization, corruption, military errors, and dubious ideology are difficult to refute, but considering the 5:2 manpower and 10:1 industrial advantages of the North, his belief that a defensive strategy and greater Southern dedication might have prevailed is less persuasive.
With bibliography, a good index, and wonderfully clear action-maps which lack only scale to be perfect, McKenzie's work is recommended as a highly readable, if tendentious catalyst for further discussion.

(The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not willingly "score" books.)

A story Emory Thomas relates in his recent bio of General Lee shows the general, now a private citizen, in church after the war. At time to partake of the Eucharist, a black man comes into the church and kneels at the altar to take the Lord's Supper at the all-white church. No one knows what to do and the air is full of tension. The first person to rise, go to the altar, and kneel by the man to eat the Body of the Lord is Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee was notable for freeing slaves left to him and his wife. His first impulse at the beginning of the war was to serve in the U.S. army -- in fact, Lincoln's administration offered him post as commander in chief of the U.S. forces. Does that mean he believed in equality of the races, as we do today? Of course not, it implies nothing of the kind.

This is the basic flaw with Mr. Fellman's book. Like most p.c. revisionists, he seems to demand that all the light of his subject be reflected through the prism of modern sensibilities. Most _modern_ people couldn't abide such scrutiny. The problem of p.c. revisionism of all kinds is that p.c. people see only one point of view and do not recognize any other as valid, and anyone who disagrees with them in a jot or tittle is "intolerant" (tolerance defined as being what they believe) and they destroy posthumously anyone in a past culture who does not reach their exalted level of "tolerance", despite the fact that they haven't had the advantages of a modern educative process where the mind is carefully groomed.

Lee was a model citizen for his time (perhaps for any time). Loyal to his family and friends. Second in his class at West Point, and he got through with no demerits. He had the benefit of name; but his father was poor, and died from injuries received protecting the free speech rights of a printer who opposed the War of 1812, and Lee inherited little from his father except his surname, a love of country and Constitution and an admiration of his father's dear friend George Washington (Lee even married into the family of Washington's step-son).

Every aspect of Lee has recently come under attack. His generalship has had many books and articles assailing it. Now the man's character is dismantled, piece by piece, by an author who seems to have no sympathy for his subject at the start.

One of the most abhorrent features of modern biographers is their need to "psychoanalyze" their subjects in retrospect. He puts Lee on the couch, so to speak, but whereas in psychoanalysis the doctor and patient exchange questions and answers, the biographer supplies both, so naturally whatever his research gives him dovetails with his presuppositions.

I won't go so far as to say this is a pure hatchet-job, though I wouldn't be surprized if it was. I'll assume the author made a genuine attempt to understand his subject and failed.

Not a recommended biography of the general who did more to knit the two factions of this country into a whole than any man after the war. If you're wary of Douglas Southall Freeman and Clifford Dowdy, both of whom spent their lives studying the man, using the same sources as Mr. Fellman, then I would heartily recommend Emory Thomas'_ROBERT E. LEE: A BIOGRAPHY_. Prof. Thomas taught at UGA when I was a grad student there; he's a fair man and his book is a BALANCED treatment of his subject. It's well worth the money.

However, if you already are predisposed to think that anyone who joined the Confederacy, for whatever reason, is inherently evil and don't want to read books that challenge your preconceptions, you'll enjoy this book immensely.

Fellman attempts a survey of sorts of Robert E. Lee's musings on a myriad of topics. As usual with political correct revisionism, Lee's OWN thoughts don't get in the way of Mr. Fellman's own bias and conjecture. Sure to be a big hit, however, with those of an anti-Southern slant.

The author largely ignored the legendary Lee for a more realistic, if less likeable, portrayal. Although I appreciated Fellman's research, I believe some of the conclusions he drew went a little overboard and led to a darker portrayal of Lee than warranted. The narrative was also somewhat dry and Lee rarely came alive for me in this book.

The development of Lee's character began with his roots. He was the son of Light Horse Harry Lee, the revolutionary hero whose reputation was ruined by gambling and dissapation. He was also the great grandnephew in-law of George Washington. Lee became a man absorbed with his own honor, reputation and family name. In many ways he seemed a bit out of his own time and more like a southern gentleman of the 18th Century. His legend, of course, was the result of one year of great success in the Civil War. However, his overconfidence led to recklessness at Gettysburg. After the war he became increasingly political and developed white-supremacist leanings. To his credit though, he was an advocate of peaceful political change rather than mob violence.

My favorite parts of the book were Lee's letters to his children. In an 1845 letter to his son, Custis, he wrote, "If children could know the misery, the devastating sorrow, with which their acts sometimes overwelm their parents they could not have the heart thus cruelly to afflict them." He later wrote to his daughter, Mildred, "Experience will teach you that, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, you will never receive such a love as is felt for you by your father and mother. That lives through absence, difficulties, and time."

This book does not work on any level. Once again, it proves that extensive research isn't enough to make a historical novel good.

Savage postulates that Lee is court-martialed over the defeat at Gettysburg, the trial taking place some time during the winter of 1863. This gives Savage an opportunity to run through all of Lee's battles (with a side trip to Jackson's Valley Campaign) and command decisions up until then. As an amateur scholar who enjoys reading nonfiction studies, I still found these segments excruciatingly boring. The more fictional bits, the court-martial itself, were slow as well and the characterization seemed flawed. Savage doesn't have anything interesting to say about Lee, his leadership, and why he should or should not have been court-martialed; he recaps other scholars' arguments with no particular insight.

The use of language in this book was horrifically bad. This is an example:

"He had foresworn strong drink as a teenager for his mother."

Whoa. Think about that one a while.

Despite the work the author has apparently put in, I see no reason whatsoever why anyone would want to read this book.

This book is semi-enjoyable for its quotes of famous individuals in the Civil War, but at the end leaves the reader unsatisfied. If the author decided to "spicen" up this book with more controversial individuals associated with the Confederacy, i.e. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Braxton Bragg, and added some life to these members and others in the book, it could of been a treat to read. The author decided to use to much direct quotes from individuals, and did not use his own imagination to make the life, court martial and thoughts of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and others more interesting. Overall a dry and unsatisfying read.

i enjoyed this book immensely being an avid civil war buff and all. a great book for those who really love history

Been a Wrox fan for some time. This is the worst book their team has produced. The material is cursory at best and totally theoretical. Very few practical examples. Never thought I would point to an MSPress Step-by-Step book, however it is far superior to this junk.

I found this book to be helpful in understanding how to utilize multidimensional database design. It was nice to see that Microsoft has some affordable alternatives one can turn to in the data mining and data warehousing market. Once again WROX has produced a helpful product for professionals in the computer industry.

I bought Sakhrs version of this book for SQL Server 7. This is not just an upgrade but a look at the new functionlity found within SQL Server 2000.

This book is a dream if you are involved within Analysis and even looking at the new DTS Analysis functions has helped me.

Comparing this with other books, by far this is the one that is well written and doesnt just come out with the obvious.

This is a silly, cheap attempt to make money. The jokes are lame and predictable, and the book is nothing but filler. Don't waste your time.

Why would anyone want to waste their time on this book? First of all, if you don't like Kathie Lee, then why bother. Second, just because Kathie Lee has a successful career and a good life does not mean that everyone should be trying to pull her down. This writer needs to find something else to write about!

I thought this was an uproar! It was hilarious! A must read for fellow Kathie Lee haters!

Palmer, Palmer, Palmer! How's the weather in La-La Land? When I read your work I was excited because the subject seemed to be original and it was a study that somebody needed to undertake. What I read was a substandard attempt to defame Robert E. Lee at the cost of logic, any basic understanding of what happened from 1861-1865, or a grasp of the discipline of writing history. In short, this book is a farce. I'll end with a plea for someone to write a full-length and competent history of Bristoe Station.

Having read several books on Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, and having a very high opinion of General Lee, I decided I should try and be objective by reading some books that were critical of General Lee. But I was very disappointed in Palmer's work. I was hoping to read some well researched criticism. What I got was a joke. Most of Palmer's arguments have serious flaws to them, any some don't make any sence at all. Don't waste your time with this one.

Understanding the military campaigns of the numerically weaker side is one of the more challenging issue in history. Unfortunately, Mr Palmer displays a thorough lack of historical perspective in this very weak presentation.

Palmer's protrait of Robert E Lee as lacking all the necessary mental capacities when it comes to undertaking offensive warfare is completely devoid of historical understanding of the campaigns involving generals such as Hannibal, Caesar, Frederick the Great, Napoleon and many others who commanded numerically inferior armies. And of course, Palmer offers absolutely no supporting evidence to prop up his claims because in this book the outcome of the campaign is proof enough.

I agree with another reviewer here that this piece is very agenda-driven, simply because of the thin presentation, no supporting evidence, which could only come from a lack of understanding of the campaigns involving the Great Captains.

When I brought this book, I expect to read about the modern pro and con of actions of Robert E. Lee. Instead, what I got was a superifical biography on Lee and some summary judgement of his actions based on the author's say so. So where is that debate of Lee's critics?? Many people like to dismissed Lee's critics as revisionists but they got it backward. While Lee was alive, he was soundly critized in many circles by veterans of Confederacy and by his foes. It was only after Lee's death did this mythology of Lee's greatness took on a godly scale as the reconstruction period was ending. This period of Lee's mythology is the true period of revisionism which did not really end until Thomas Connelly came out with the Marble Man which brought Lee back to Earth and where author critized without merit. This book lack any depth and appears to be pretty shallow work. If the author wanted to back up Lee, do with so with evidence and logic. Just saying so don't mean much. This book will probably go back to the used book store soon......

Taylor's book is a satisfactory survey of Lee's life. Unfortunately, that is not how the book is billed. Taylor purports to answer Lee's critics. I'm squarely in his camp; I find much of the criticism of Lee to be scholarly opportunism: an attempt to make a name through iconoclasm. Taylor is right when he notes that the attempt to puncture the Lee myth went too far, but he fails to convincingly demonstrate why. He brings up specific criticisms infrequently, inadequately lays out the critic's argument, and often dismisses the criticism without having made a convincing case of his own. His arguments concerning Lee's attitudes toward slavery are never fully convincing, for example. This is particularly distressing when one can see that, in most cases, the convincing counterargument is there, waiting to be made. By constructing his book in the format of a chronological narrative, Taylor lost the opportunity to level a blast at academic graverobbers. A book aimed at answering Lee's critics needs to spend a great deal more time and effort on the critics and their arguments. To Taylor's credit, he never attempts to whitewash information damaging to one of his points. He tries to be complete in his portrayal, and that alone makes this a worthwhile read.