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Robert E. Lee: A Penguin Life by Roy, Jr. Blount
From Publishers Weekly - This concise Penguin Life biography can be compared to the Confederate general's Civil War career: valiant, honorable and surprisingly successful with limited resources. Blount, a humorist with 12 books to his credit, avoids hagiography, debunking and psychobiography (except in speculation largely relegated to Appendix 1). Writing from the perspective of his Southern heritage, Blount exhibits apposite insight and detachment, instantly recognizing anything that has ever been used as a club for beating the South. As to the actual narrative, he is vividly detailed about Lee's disastrous childhood, which led to his famous self-control. The description of his Civil War career supports Grant's verdict of Lee as lucky on the offensive but really formidable only on the defensive, and avoids jargon that might make the military passages inaccessible to the lay reader. The chapter on the postwar Lee is perhaps the most moving part of the book, since it is in that period that the ailing general shows his best self: advocating North-South reconciliation, refusing lucrative commercial offers, and reviving Washington College (now Washington-Lee University) as its President. This effort is not equal to Emory Thomas's work, the best one-volume coverage of a subject who inspired Douglas Southall Freeman to four. But as a literate and balanced introduction to a subject whose complexity too many current writers avoid, this book deserves a most respectable ranking among today's Civil War literature.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Robert E. Lee: A Biography by Emory M. Thomas
From Publishers Weekly - Thomas, a distinguished historian of the Civil War (The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience), has written a major analytical biography of Robert E. Lee. Synthesizing printed and manuscript sources, he presents Lee as neither the icon of Douglas Southall Freeman nor the flawed figure presented by Thomas Connolly. Lee emerges instead as a man of paradoxes, whose frustrations and tribulations were the basis for his heroism. Lee's work was his play, according to the author, and throughout his life he made the best of his lot. Believing that evil springs from selfishness, he found release in service to his family, his country and, not least, to the men he led. One of history's great captains and most beloved generals, he refused to take himself too seriously. This comic vision of life ultimately shaped an individual who was both more and less than his legend. Highly recommended. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal - Gen. Robert Edward Lee was a leader who inspired great devotion among the men who followed him, and he continues to inspire great interest to this day. Thomas (The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865, 1979) presents a fresh look at the general. By examining Lee as a person, the biographer renders him intensely human. Lee is shown to be the son of an unstable father, a frustrated husband, and a devoted parent. He encountered many hardships but became great not "because of what he did ...but because of the way he lived." Given the prodigious number of Lee biographies available, this may be an optional purchase, but it is nonetheless a valuable addition to the studies of the general.?Robert A. Curtis, Taylor Memorial P.L., Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.