It was with great disappointment that I read in 15 minutes a book whose title had promised so much. A small, thin book to begin with, "Wit and Wisdom" is heavy on white space between too few quotes. The quotes that are collected herein appear to have been collected carelessly with little concern for their merit. The truly memorable sayings contained in this book can be counted on one hand and can be had for free with a good search engine on the internet. This is one of the few books that ever saddedned this Librarian.

Devereaux Cannon, Son of Confederate Veterans, expert historian, and true believer in the "cause" and its great leader Robert E. Lee, has chosen a wonderful selection of quotes that reveal the multi-faceted General Lee. He has captured Lee the leader, Lee the strategist, Lee the man, Lee the parent, Lee the commander and the many other Robert Lee's that we know and recognize as the greatest loved of American military commanders. One quote truly stands out, as General Lee speaks across the generations to us today: "The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it...I grieve for posterity, for American principles and American liberty."

Excellent book.

Accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg always seem to focus on who is to blame for the Confederate loss. Dowdey's version happens to blame Longstreet, primarily. However, Longstreet fans shouldn't avoid the book on that account. Dowdey gives a clear, well-written, though inevitably at this date somewhat old-fashioned, account. As no other author that I'm aware of does, he discusses the preparation for the invasion: the way that Davis refused Lee the reinforcements he'd requested, the way that Lee failed to rethink his method of dealing with subordinates after Jackson's death. I think Dowdey is a little scanty on Culp's Hill, but then I think that about everyone but Pfanz. Overall, this is a good basic analysis, definitely worth reading.

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

As a Southerner whose ancestors fought for both the Confederacy AND the Union in the Civil War, I tend to disagree with both sides in the debate over "Lee Considered". I agree with those who argue that a more balanced and realistic view of Robert E Lee is long overdue, and that Nolan's book does offer some telling blows at the Lee mythology. But, I also don't believe that Nolan has made the "convincing" case against Lee that some of the posters on this board would have you to believe. Nolan, who is a lawyer and not an historian (a fact which should be borne in mind as you read this book), attempts to put the romantic, mythological Lee "on trial" and expose him for the flawed and decidedly unheroic person that Nolan believes him to be. Like a good lawyer, Nolan denies trying to "convict" Lee in the beginning of the book, and even states that he admires him in some ways, but the rest of the book reveals Nolan to be committed to "convicting" his target of several specific charges. Namely: 1)That Lee was privately far more supportive of slavery than the Lee myth would have it; 2)That Lee was far more supportive of secession and "breaking up the Union" than his myth reveals; 3)That Lee made numerous mistakes as a General that helped cause the South's defeat - mistakes such as pursuing an aggressive, "go get'em" strategy that led to the highest casualty rates of any Civil War General and bled his smaller army dry; and 4)That Lee prolonged the Civil War longer than was necessary by continuing to fight after Gettysburg, which Nolan argues "convinced" Lee that the South was doomed to defeat, and therefore he should have urged the Confederacy to surrender, or at least refused to fight or encourage his men to make useless sacrifices for a cause he privately knew was doomed. Nolan presents a good deal of "evidence" (much of it in Lee's own words), but like a good prosecutor he leaves out "evidence" which contradicts his theories, and he completely ignores the fact that Lee was a nineteenth-century man, not a late twentieth-century one. An historian would have put many of Lee's views into further context (without necessarily excusing them). Dr. James McPherson, the famed Civil War historian and author of "Battle Cry of Freedom", can hardly be called a "neo-Confederate" historian (if anything he's pro-Union), but even he has some problems with Nolan's book. A few years ago he wrote a criticism of "Lee Considered" in which he "judged" Nolan's "trial" of Lee, and while he found Lee to be "guilty" of being more pro-slavery than the Lee myth allows, he also found Lee to be "innocent" of prolonging the War (McPherson points out that the South still had a good chance of winning the war right up to Lincoln's reelection in November 1864), and that Nolan failed to "prove" many of his other charges, although McPherson argues that Nolan does raise some worthwhile questions about the accuracy of the traditional Lee myth. I fully agree with McPherson's views - this book is worth reading because it does offer a view of Lee that is in some ways more "realistic" than the Lee myth. However, Nolan fails to destroy Lee's reputation as a great general and one of the true "legends" of American military history. Overall, this book is quite a mixed bag, but it's still a thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating piece of work, even if Nolan is sometimes off-target.

Reading some of the other reviews of this book is proof enough that the Lost Cause orthodoxy is alive and well. It would be simple enough to ascribe this book to vile Yankee enmity for daring to challenge accepted assumptions about RE Lee.

That having been said, I am not totally satisfied with Nolan's approach. He rightfully criticizes various historians for drawing conclusions about Lee based on single statements or letters written by Lee (often after the fact). However, Nolan is often guilty of the same misdeed. While I suspect that the documentary record would tend support Nolan's thesis than undermine it, nonetheless the documentation Nolan provides is quite limited. Carefully selecting the evidence that supports your argument might work in a court of law, but not in a work of history.

I also think that Nolan at times indulges in unnecessary hair-splitting, such as in the 5-page Chapter 5, where he discusses Lee's feelings towards his adversaries. The chapter seemed to me to be totally superfluous and contributed nothing to the book overall.

Nolan, in an effort to discredit the dogma of the Lost Cause, at times goes overboard in his assumptions. When criticizing Lee for undermining the Confederacy's war effort by going too much on the offensive, Nolan states that the South actually had a realistic chance of winning the war. His argument is that if Lee had preserved his manpower more prudently, the South could have withstood the North's attempts at conquest. This is a valid argument, because it is obvious that Lee did a good job of wrecking his army from 1861-1863.

However, Nolan's larger argument rests on the supposition that the South was effectively managing its war effort elsewhere. Ironically, like many of the devotees of the Lost Cause, Nolan ignores the impact of the war in the Western Theatre while focusing on the Eastern Theatre. The reality was that in the Western Theatre, especially in the first two years of the war when North & South were more or less equally matched in the field, the South was steadily losing ground virtually from the beginning. This is due as much to the incompetent generalship of the Confederacy as anything else. Even if Lee had carefully husbanded his manpower, he could not have undone the damage caused by generals such as Polk & Bragg in the Western Theatre.

The best part of Nolan's book is the final chapter, where he discusses the overall effort by the South (with very willing collusion from the North) to turn the Civil War & the Antebellum period into some sort of idyllic fairy tale, due to the racist attitudes that both regions shared. He gives a convincing argument about century-long effort to change the very nature of the war, of which the Lee mythology is only one element.

While at times this book veers dangerously close to being a commonplace chop-job, overall it makes a decent contribution to the literature. If Nolan had provided more comprehensive documentation, its impact would be all the better. As it is, one cannot consider it the last word, but it has ushered in an honest debate on the subject.

Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History by Alan T. Nolan is a book that brings us the human man and not he icon of the Civil War.

Lee is a paradox of sorts, while owning slaves he was opposed to the institution of slavery. Lee left the United States Army so as not to take his sword and use it against his native Virginia. A most revered but misunderstood man, Lee was a brilliant military leader who was tactically effective in bringing the exploits of the Confederacy to those of Northern aggression.

This book brings out a more human man, complete with all of the frailties and fallacies. A man or moral character, but a man whos job is that of a soldier. This book gives us a more honest view of Lee... a Lee not on his terms, but a Lee in the eye of history. No assumptions, just a rigorous reexamination through correspondence and historical sources.

Everyone knows the larger than life Lee, but knowing Lee is to know that he is a man... a man who happens to be the Commanding General of the Confederate Forces, a native Virginian, and a Southern aristocrat who opposed slavery.

Robert E. Lee has been the subject of so much hagiography that it's difficult to write of him as a normal, everyday human being. The South has enshrined him to such a ludicrous extent, that anything negative about Lee is viewed as hearsay. Michael Fellman attempts here to paint an objective and truthful picture of a flawed man and an overrated general. He states the obvious: Lee was a military loser, he lost the Civil War, and he lost it in part because of fundamental mistakes *he* made. The myth of the "Lost Cause" in American culture has been both pernicious and destructive.

Fellman's previous biography of William T. Sherman is the superior effort, but his take on Lee is interesting and novel. He does tend to engage in nit-picking over analysis of Lee's letters, orders and remarks, sometimes putting an irritating and condescending spin on Lee's intent. There is a dose of Freudian bombast thrown in for good measure. Yet he weaves together the narrative in an interesting and free flowing fashion. This is far from a definitive or completely error-free examination of Lee, but it makes for a fairly engrossing read

Robert E. Lee is ever surrounded by a bodyguard of admirers who constantly fend off those who would speak plainly and honestly about the man. Like Alan Nolan before him, however, Fellman uses Lee's own words to demonstrate that the great general employed his remarkable skills in the defense of slavery and racial bigotry. Lee's defenders make much of his freeing slaves, yet, as Fellman points out, Lee did so only when forced to by circumstances. As for those who insist that Lee was free of racial animosity, Fellman need only allow Lee to speak for himself. Time and again, Fellman shows how Lee sought to deprive newly-freed African-Americans of the right to vote, hold elected office, or even find employment. One need only read Lee's statements before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in February of 1866 to find proof of his monumental disdain of black Americans. In describing the general's views on race, Fellman also points outs that Lee, patrician aristocrat that he was, held ordinary white Americans in scarcely higher regard. I find this especially ironic as most of Lee's more devoted defenders are drawn from this group.

Some years ago Marble Man was published, explaining how post-war Confederates turned Lee into the symbol of fallen Southern chivalry. However, the first part of the book, a psychobiography of Lee, was extremely weak, because the author was unacquainted with 19th century norms of language and conscience.
Fellman has made a systematic study of ALL of Lee's private correspondence throughout his life: the letters written to his wife and children, to the young ladies he enjoyed flirting with, and his military/political correspondence.An entirely new figure emerges, free of the accretions of Douglas Freeman.
Far from being reluctant to leave the US Army in 1861, he embraces the Confederate cause. A man of his time and place, he carries the racism implicit in the Southern viewpoint. Most interestingly, his post-war career at Washington College shows him completely aware of his role as a political actor who represents the fallen cause. Must reading for any serious student of the Civil War.

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.)

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

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.