I'd be tempted to call this revisionism, but I really just find this to be bad history. Besides an obvious anti-Southern agenda, I don't know where the author is "going" with this. One page he bad mouths Lee-staffer Walter Taylor for deflating the number of troops Lee had/has available at a particular time - then he contradicts his argument by outlining those who are constantly deserting!@? Gosh, does Lee have the "numbers" or not? Likewise, Taylor is "guilty" of inflating numbers of Federals. Of course, Marvel then throughout the text outlines the outlandish amounts of Federal troops that were indeed available to Grant!?#@ A second folly is his contention that the FEDERAL troops were starving! Of course, this is followed by accounts of the Southrons having no forage and eating the ol' parched corn routine. Much like Wiley Sword's hatchet job on John Bell Hood, there is nothing Lee can do to "satisfy" W. Marvel in this inconsistent, contradictory effort. I'm sure to be wary of any other W. Marvel book.

Lee's Last Retreat: THe Flight to Appomattox written by William Marvel is history at its best... not filled with untruths that spring from imagination, but from actual diaries of those who fought and were there... this book is devoid of major attempts of participating generals at the art of fabrication and embellishments, therefore this is an attempt to write history with primarily from comtempory source material.

There is a lot of literature written about the Civil War and most of it is excellent historical fiction, but there is an honest attempt to write the truth about the final days of "Lee's Last Retreat." This book has a goal in mind and it is to tell what happened in the last week of the Civil War from Spring 1865 and on into the final week Monday, April 3 to Sunday, April 9, 1865.

This book has limited the scope to mainly just the final seven days of the war as Grant is chasing and closing ranks around Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The final day at Appomattox Court House, the day the Grant accepts Lee's total surrender.

The truth is that Lee made at least one fatal mistake during his last campaign, and his subordinates were guilty of errors and omissions for which another commanding general would have been held responsible. For all the ultimate good it might have done him, Lee could actually have escaped alone the line of the Danville railroad had the administrative framework of his army not disintegrated, and with it the morale of his men. Had his engineers not failed to provide a pontoon bridge for the escape of the Richmond column, or had they warned him of that failure, he might have avoided the final delay at Amelia Court House. These and other errors of omission could have swayed, if corrected, the final out come of the war and a much different result.

The book has a rapid paced narrative that brings to light the final week in the campaign of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia the finest army to be ever assembled and fight on American soil. This book is full of actual accounts, letters, diaries and other contemporary documents. This is a welcome addition to your library for this time period.

This book has been hyped as a myth busting history of Lee's retreat to Appomattox. As such I feared that it would be a bashing of Lee and the Southern viewpoint of the war. Instead Marvel has written a very even-handed account of this story that has become an epic of American history.
"Lee's Last Retreat" is a fast paced book retelling Lee's retreat and Grant's relentless pursuit. Unlike so many recent Civil War books, Marvel does not get lost in the details nor does he make his book too long. He tells the story in 199 pages including 23 pages of photographs. To use a term seldom used to describe works of nonfiction, this is a real page turner. That is not to say that this is a "light" work. The author spices his account with a lot of detail from diaries and letters. His research and documentation is first-rate. For those wanting more he includes @40 pages of appendices and an order of battle. This is Marvel's second work on Appomattox and he is very familiar with the material. His other book was "A Place Called Appomattox".
Marvel does not hesitate to state his opinion and I found his insights fair and refreshing. I found myself laughing at some of his characterizations. For example, on page 87, he refers to George Custer as "the insufferably arrogant Custer." He spares neither Rebels nor Yankees where it is deserved.
"Lee's Last Retreat" adds to the excellent reputation that Marvel earned with his book on Andersonville. Add this book to your library.

I just finished reading "Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862"
by Joseph L. Harsh.

Ouch!!!! Talk about painful!!! Harsh (a history professor who grew up in Hagerstown) simply cannot write!! Some people can write well; others write poorly. Harsh is at the bottom of the latter group. (I feel sorry for his students -- they probably suffered severe ear and brain trauma from his lectures. And he writes as if he were lecturing!!)

He LOVES R.E. Lee. (According to Harsh, everything that went wrong was someone else's fault -- without exception!!) Then there are Harsh's numerous "moments" when he tells you what a particular person MUST have been thinking at any given time -- as if Harsh (or anyone else!!) could know! Finally come are his analyses of various events and situations. In Harsh's eyes, all ideas that contradict his opinions OBVIOUSLY MUST be wrong -- it's just plain "foolish" to think otherwise.

It's too bad that Harsh just didn't tell what happened and allowed us to form our own judgements. (By the way, he plays pretty "fast and loose" with the facts. Plus, he omits vital information that doesn't correspond to his interpretation.)
In his preface, Harsh even has the audacity to state that, besides his book, there are only one or two other books that cover the Maryland Campaign in depth. Well, I have been studying Antietam for over 35 years, have been there several hundred times, and have read literally thousands of books, articles, and documents about Antietam. Harsh is full of it!!

If you were thinking of buying this book, don't bother. You can gain just as much by pulling out all your teeth with a pair of pliars, then dropping a 200-pound lead weight on your foot.

I agree with much the prior reviewers have said. Although I am not a Civil War buff, I found the book readable. I appreciate his methodology also. Harsh attempts to reconstruct the intelligence available to Lee when he made crucial decisions and to assess his decisions based on the moves he could have made given what he knew and in light of his strategic aims for the campaign. All historians should stick by this method. He also does a very creditable job in his attempt to ascertain what Lee knew. On balance very well researched and well argued. I especially enjoyed the end in which he places his argument within the context of existing historiography on the subject. One criticism I have relates to the maps, which is discussed in the review of one of Dr. Harsh's other books. I bought Landscape Turned Red as the result of reading Taken at the Flood. And the maps are much more helpful in that Sears's book. When you are dealing with a lot of different place names and different corps moving around, it makes the flow a lot easier.

(Disclaimer: I sat in on a few classes of Dr. Harsh's as an undergraduate).

Much praise has been heaped on Dr. Harsh for this defining work on the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Awards have rolled in - perhaps the setup for the Pulitzer Prize for his planned upcoming works on the Union Side of the first two years of the American Civil War in the eastern theatre. Certainly, Harsh's approach of - what did they know, when did they know it, what did they do with information? - represents a step forward in understanding this critical campaign. Perhaps this method is taken a little too far, perhaps the author is too contrarian, eager to dispel existing notions and overturn previous judgements, but that's the fun of it - great academic arguments will result. Harsh's academic method - he is currently Professor of History at George Mason University, a school that he originally lobbied to be called "The University of Northern Virginia" (non-ACW fanatics didn't get it) - is unquestioned. A critical, thorough survey has been conducted of available original source material as well as established secondary sources. All told, it is an amazing story. This work is the result of decades of labor on this subject (Harsh is a native of Hagerstown, MD). One of the great points to be made here is that Lee was human after all, he made some significant mis-judgements. If you didn't know it from other exposures to Dr. Harsh you couldn't deduce from this work that Harsh consider Lee to be one of our countries finest soldiers. Even the best have their bad days - or campaigns, in this case. This is an absolutely first rate work on one of the most important (Harsh obviously believes the most important) campaigns of the ACW. Unfortunately, because of its academic format and size, it will not reach wide audiences. For those willing to make the effort, they will be richly rewarded.

Bob Lee has clearly made an effort to learn and understand a field in which he has had no formal training. Sadly, in this task he has failed. The errors of fact, theory and understanding are so abundant, numbering two or three on nearly every one of the 502 pages of the book, that it would be impossible for me to list and explain them all without writing a tome of similar size. Such gems include labelling the blood borne protozoa malaria as a virus that lives in the brain, confusing the addition of DNA to cells with the creation of immortal cells, using a normal cellular signalling system (tyrosine phosphorylation) as a means of targeting blacks Vs whites...

He makes the critical error of looking for evidence to support his apparently pre-supposed idea that there was a scientific "paradigm" (read "conspiracy") to develop and use a biowarfare agent in the unlikely form of a chronic retrovirus infection. Had he gone about his argument in a better way he might have made better (and easier) reading, but instead I found myself dragged through completely disparate and unconnected fields of research, strung together with a comedy of errors to support this rather unlikely idea. My girlfriend laughed so hard at this book she cried.

But there lies the crunch. Unless you understood my first paragraph you are likely to be taken in by this story. My girlfriend and I are working in the field of molecular biology and have had formal training in veterinary and medical pathology respectively. Bob himself has told me that he did try to get answers to many of his questions from people in the field, but was rebuffed, and perhaps understandably so. The sad thing is that had he had input from a research assistant of any half-decent laboratory, most of his errors would have been spotted. This would have meant that most, if not all, of his case would have been rendered redundant: this book need never have been written.

I think Bob sincerely believes what he says here, but that doesn't make him right. There may well be evidence to support the creation of HIV by a world-wide cabal of military-directed scientists, but if such evidence exists it isn't presented here. Bonus marks are given for humour.

AIDS: An Explosion Of The Biological Time-Bomb? is an historical exploration of leukemia and cancer related research down over the last eighty years in the context of newly emerging diseases such as AIDS, Mad-Cow disease, and other hemorrhagic fevers, as well as other neurological and lymphotomous diseases in different animal species - including primates. Robert Lee's AIDS is an important, exhaustively researched, informatively presented, extensive and comprehensive treatise that should be considered a core title for all medical school, public health center, health advocacy organizations, and community library reference collections across the country.

...AIDS: An Explosion Of The Biological Time-Bomb? is anhistorical exploration of leukemia and cancer related research downover the last eighty years in the context of newly emerging diseasessuch as AIDS, Mad-Cow disease, and other hemorrhagic fevers, as wellas other neurological and lymphomotous diseases in different animalspecies - including primates. Robert Lee's AIDS is an important,exhaustively researched, informatively presented, extensive andcomprehensive treatise that should be considered a core title for allmedical school, public health center, health advocacy organizations,and community library reference collections across the country...

As did Gilbert Moxley Sorrel (Longstreet), staff officer Walter Taylor offers his insights of the War of Southern Independence. Indeed, Taylor has rightful claim to his judgements, as his acquaitance with Lee offered him first-hand knowledge of events. However, I caution future readers that this is NOT a memoir or diary per se - Taylor rarely gives any unique slants to anything, and more often than not, seems occupied with setting the "numbers straight" - many, many, many tables and charts are provided giving the numbers available for this battle and that battle, etc...I suggest this book only for serious students of the war - and more particularly, those wanting "first-hand" data on "numbers." Of final interest, though, is Taylor's disdain for Hiram U. Grant (accurately recognizing Grant as a true butcher - merely throwing big numbers at an under-manned, under-supllied army) and the insertion of a speech given upon the anniversary of Genl Lee's birthday (albeit NOT written, or presented by Taylor himself)

Taylor's approach to covering the history of the Confederate struggle is encouraging to read. Though the title of this book tends to be a bit misleading. It should be called Four years of Confederate history. Taylor tends to describe battle movements and give calculations as to the manpower of divisions, brigades and regiments to a dragging sense. This books I recommend highly for those trying to get an accurate count of soldiers available for each battle, how many were casualties, after battle net amounts,etc.. Rarely are daily affairs of Lee covered. When I read this book I was disappointed to find out that it wasn't a book about General Lee and his daily livelyhood as I wanted to read about. Since Taylor was Lee's secretary I thought who better than to describe Lee's motives, attitudes, triumphs and defeats? Very rarely did Taylor ever mention Lee in this manner. Not enough to capture the man and tell his story. This book is a quick refresh of battles and movements throughout the war of the Army of Northern Virginia which hardly fits being called Four Years With General Lee. Credit is due to Taylor's ability to calculate total manpower and army positions throughout the four years though falls way short in covering Lee.

Wonderful book describing the massive work and devotion to duty that General Lee adhered to. Written by his A.A.G. A must read for southern patriots.

Is it true? Can anyone interpret the words of Christ and make money off of it? Where are the footnotes? Where are the author's credentials or degree(s) in theology? Where are the references or notes? What is the (formal) process the author went through to arrive at his conclusions/interpretations?

This is a great book. It's easier to read than the New Testament and in some ways more interesting.

At last, some one has been able to sort through all the eons of garbarge and dust, and has uncovered once again the sacred message of Christ. Every religious organization could stand to learn a thing or two from the original message and this is a book that will help. This is a happy rude awakening! Wake up world!

I used this book for my Environmental Geology class. Overall I think it's an ok text. It's not as readily understandable an reader friendly as some of the other introductory geology texts on the market that I have read--it's somewhat obsecure at times. I think that it's rather overpriced as well for a black and white paperback textbook.

It does however cover a large selection of material in a succint manner, yet with enough detail to satisfy the curiosity of the interested student. Some of the stuff in this textbook is not common to geology texts--principally the aspects that have to do with the biosphere.

Overall, it's a reasonable textbook, besides the cost, which I think is inflated. Textbook prices are inflated in general in any case!

I used this book for an introductory environmental studies course. The book is full of information I had never before discovered. The chapters clearly describe how smaller cycles and feedback mechanisms relate the health of the earth as a whole.

If you are curious about global warming this book has great factual information to start an understanding of the concept.

Earth System Science is a new field, one that evolves much more quickly than textbooks can be revised. This one is as current as you can expect, and it approaches the field of science in a much better way than any other textbook I have seen. In particular, most earth system texts approach the field by morphing from a traditional discipline. Usually, it's a geology textbook revised to include atmospheric, oceanic, and climatic studies. But earth system science requires an interdisciplinary approach from the start, a problem based approach. Our global environmental problems need this approach, and this book covers them in a reasonably detailed and accurate manner.

Since the writer has to review his own book, you already know that he has a lack of self-confidence

Another nerd-book on the .NET bandwaggon. Full of typos and nothing to distinguish it from the crowd - sorry :o(

This book is an excellent book. ASP.Net has biggener concepts as well as advanced concepts. It is really a valuable book that you will use over and over

This book should probably only get one star but I gave it two because it does give the reader a good look at Lee the man instead of the saint. The problem is that it goes too far. It is hard but possible to make a much loved figure human without going to the extreme Connelly goes to. A happy medium would have been much more likely to bring us the real Lee. Sadly instead of going after the real General Lee Connelly goes on the attack and gives us a picture of a sad person who does not reflect the real man. Was Robert E. Lee the pure figure he is often pictured as? Not likely. On the other hand he also was not the pathetic figure given us by Connelly. In an attempt to destroy the myths of the past Connelly creates a set of his own half truths and myths. Shame on him!

This book might be approached as an examination of how a well-known personality is transformed for a human being into a cultural icon. Sequentially and chronologically Connelly takes his readers through that process using Robert E. Lee as the item of investigation. Along the way, Connelly makes commentary on the differences between the cultures of the north and south and how Lee's legion spread because of those cultural differences. That context has been well-established by numerous writers. Connelly simply uses it for a closer examination of Lee. For example, on page 102 he quotes another historian, Bradley T. Johnson in writing "Environmental factors had forced North and South to develop contrasting socieites. The North, 'invigorated' by constant struggle with nature, became materialistic, grasping for wealth and power. The South's 'more generous climate' had wrought a life-style based upon non-materialism and adherence to a finer code of 'veracity and honor in man, chastity and fidelity in women'"
This book helps a person to understand how history evolves in the process of retelling over a period of several generations.

This book is not just a revisionist look at Robet E. Lee but also an objective evaluation of the Southern Lost Cause Syndrome that utilzed Lee as their flagship for a just cause. Thomas Connelly is a great writer of the western theater notably the history of the Army of the Tennessee and of the western Confederate cabal that had conflicts with Jefferson Davis. Connelly offers what southerners and partiucularly Virginians may find as a harsh evaluation of Lee during the war. This book also includes some psycho-analysis that offers some reasoning for Lee's very formal demeanor which is in far contrast's to Joe Johnston whose troops would pat him on the head on occasion but not dare approach Lee in such an informal manner. In my opinion the book demonstrates that Lee was simply not infallible like amy man who has overall responsibility, he must accept some of the blame for failure. There is also the question of whether Lee was too aggressive with limited manpower (Gary Gallagher has referred to this as crucial, that the Confederacy was in serious need of military victories for morale). The Lost Cause contingent made up of Jubal Early and company always gave Lee total credit for victory but not in defeat, Early & company always made someone other than Lee a scapegoat in their version of history. Gettysburg serves as the grand indictment of this philosophy where Longstreet becomes the total goat at Gettysburg in the 1870's while one of his accusers, Early, covers his own lackluster performance by publicly hanging Longstreet. Early raps himself with the cloak of Robert E. Lee to deflect criticism of his own actions and post war exile. To my mind, Connaly expolores better than anyone else the self serving relationship of Jubal Early to the Lost Cause syndrome in Early's attempt to rewite history. Connelly brings out that Jackson was the south's great hero until Lee's death and the emergence of Lee's rise among southern writers. He also argues that Lee lacked a national picture of how to best serve the Confederacy by his opposing transferring troops west to bolster those failing armies with limited resources. He argues that Virginia was Lee's first and main focus. Highly reccommend this book, whether you agree or not, Connelly makes you look at the facts presented and while not meaning to destroy Lee's image of a competent and charismatic general, it tends to show him as human and mortal who like everyone made some mistakes. We all have to look at historians presentations carefully, even Douglas Freeman in Lee's Lieutanents slightly diminishes Jackson's role and he makes Longstreet shorter, fatter and a plotter of self grandization. This is an intellectually challenging book best appreciated by those that have an open mind. This book most likely helped foster Alan Nolan's "Lee Considered."

While I certainly cannot agree that this book, or its principal subject, Robert Hale, present anything close to "one of the best demolitions" of laissez-faire, this book is quite intriguing; and I think that anyone who is in the business of defending the concepts of laissez-faire or present-day libertarianism would do well to ponder upon Hale's arguments. This is not to say that a full understanding of Hale is essential (it may even be stretching it to say useful) for a complete defense of laissez-faire, but he certainly does present an intellectual and philisophical challenge for it's adherants. Fried does an excellent job of documenting and reiterating Hale's approach to legal theory and the early 20th century thought underlying it - but in the end, we are really only left with Hale's analysis which, while intriguing and ingenious, is little more than an intellectual puzzle the ramifications of which even Fried (an evident admirer) expresses some skepticism.

Hale's attempts to defeat the concept of laissez-faire (linguistically) put him in the position of beating up on traditionalists like Thomas Nixon Carver, without giving us any practical reason as to why they were right or wrong. Even if we were to take Hale's central argument as correct, (he essentially contests the idea of a minimalist state as conceptually incoherent) Hale gives litte to no insight as to why the "coercion" he advocates is preferable to the "coercion" of the marketplace. Only once in Fried's book is the antithesis of Hale, Frederich Hayek, mentioned - whose defense of laissez-faire was primarily based on it's efficiency in conveying vast amounts of interspresed and fragmented knowledge as to the opportunity costs of goods and labor, and contantly changing values and preferences throughout complex societies. Yet it is this argument which is (by far) more central to the debate about laissez-faire - and this argument which Hale essentially ignores - preferring instead to defeat classic liberals on their choice of terms. Even if he were right, Hale gets us absoultely nowhere; not to mention, as does Fried, that Hale's expansive notion of "coercion" to include any form of human conduct tends to embarrass the idea of free speech or the civil rights movement - of which his progressive counterparts have been so active in protecting.

The book does not only deal with the so-called "empty" ideas of liberty and property, but also extends to Hale's analysis of "suplus value" of property and rate regulation of monopolies. There are problems here as well - but by far the most important are his idea regarding freedom and coercion. Hale is a intellectual challenge, but really nothing more - and while he clearly rejects the conceptions of liberty and property as they were conceived in the Lochner era, he gives us no good reason to do the same; and at times it seemed that even Fried wanted to pop Hale's balloon - but for some reason could never quite bring herself to do it.

Asking for Hale's rebuttal to Hayek is foolish because (a) it is anacronistic and (b) Hale was writing in the field of law, while Hayek was writing in economics. The introduction and an excerpt (which you can see here on Amazon) describe the laissez-faire rhetoric that Hale was refuting.

Hale clearly explains why laissez-faire is wrong about liberty: all property is a grant of unaccountable private power from the state. Thus, it doesn't matter if liberty is infringed by the state retaining the power or private owners abusing the power (as in the cases of monopolies, public utilities, and opposition to unions.) Those were Hale's primary interests throughout his career. And interestingly, they are also precisely places where Hayek's social calculation arguments fail.

Hale (and Fried) don't bother explaining why they thought their alternative was better: the progressive case was being widely made elsewhere at the time. Hale's contribution was to specialize in kicking out the supports of laissez-faire so that progressive arguments could compete fairly with extremist capitalist arguments.

This is an essential book for understanding the major changes in legal theory of the progressive era. The change from classical liberalism to modern progressive liberalism was profound, and required the abolition of a number of myths presumed by law and the judiciary. These myths have since been resurrected by the libertarians, and it is enlightening to see the satisfying reasons why they were rejected so long ago. It's easy to tell how threatened libertarians feel about this by the vehemence of their attacks.

College-level reading, and not for those with short attention spans.