Used price: $10.95
Buy one from zShops for: $11.95
Used price: $14.99
Buy one from zShops for: $17.05
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
Used price: $5.98
List price: $18.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $10.59
Collectible price: $14.50
Buy one from zShops for: $12.00
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
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.
List price: $14.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $3.11
Buy one from zShops for: $9.63
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.
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.
List price: $29.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $10.51
Collectible price: $12.71
Buy one from zShops for: $19.00
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.)
Used price: $1.79
Collectible price: $7.41
Buy one from zShops for: $21.98
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.
List price: $59.99 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $57.59
Buy one from zShops for: $44.90
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.
Used price: $1.89
Buy one from zShops for: $3.99
Used price: $2.99
Collectible price: $7.35
Buy one from zShops for: $3.50
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.
offense or defense; however, the history of campaigns in western Virginia have been
overshadowed by the military events in eastern Virginia. The author notes that the two
regions of Virginia were fundamentally separated before the Civil War "....by reasons
of climate, soil and situation, Eastern Virginia remained the region of large plantations,
with heavy slave population, and profitable agriculture, especially in the production of
tobacco. West Virginia....having been settled by hunter, pioneers, lumberman and miners,
possessed little in common with her more wealthy and aristocratic neighbors beyond the
mountains." As the text notes, Virginia was already divided.
The author debunks the myth of Union solidarity in western Virginia stating that while
60% of the population were pro-Union, 40% of the population were Southern
sympathizers and they controlled 60% of the counties. The text states that on June 2nd the
first land battle of the Civil War took place when Confederate Colonel Porterfield's
command was surprised and being outnumbered fled in chaos in a defeat dubbed the
"Phillippi Races."
Many of the future problems that were to plague both armies were evident in the fighting
in western Virginia. The text illustrates the problems of incompetent, politically appointed
commanders; one example was the ex-Virginia governors Generals Wise and Floyd
refusing to cooperate and were jealous of each other. Both armies had officers lacking
military experience commanding poorly trained and woefully equipped armies.
Washington and Richmond together with their field commanders lacked working
knowledge of the area's topography, road conditions and seasonal weather so that Robert
E. Lee, a Virginian, had to personally scout the area to gain knowledge of the field. In
addition, due largely to miserable field conditions, disease played a formidable and tragic
role for the armies in the field which was an "insurmountable obstacle to any offensive
campaign."
The author states that "during the last half of July (1861), Federal forces worked diligently
to place a firm military grip on the areas of West Virginia under their control. The text
outlines the 1861 battles at Carnifax Ferry, Cheat Mountain, Sewell Mountain and
Barstow. However, before Lee had any realistic opportunity to succeed in the west "and
just four months into the war it seemed that the division of the Old Dominion was
assured." On October 29th Lee returned to Richmond for another assignment and by the
end of November the West Virginia campaigns of 1861 were over. The Confederacy
having lost control of the area in 1861, on June 20,1863, West Virginia became the 35th
state in the Union.
The author states "that the South's attempts to retain West Virginia were feeble at best."
He concludes writing "The Northern forces were not entirely successful either. They
were....more the beneficiaries of an initially inept enemy, than the heroes of a successful
campaign....The almost wilderness nature of the country, with its weary miles of steep
mountain roads that became impassable in wet weather, and the acute absence of forage
for animals were elements which the Federal commanders greatly underestimated."
Historian have not documented the 1861 battles in West Virginia as completely as
the later battles in eastern Virginia; however, the strategic failure of the Confederacy to control
western Virginia exposed the Army of Northern Virginia's left flank often requiring
deployment of critically needed forces from eastern Virginia thereby limiting Confederate
strategic options in the east.
The serious reader of Civil War history will find this account informative.