Synopsis
This vivid depiction of the fiercest battles ever fought on American soil presents the Civil War as you've never seen it before-with a provocative re-examination of the military genius of Robert E. Lee, and a critical, pragmatic re-evaluation of the performance of the generals who led the armies of both South and North.
Military strategist and historian Bevin Alexander takes you behind the battle lines into the generals' camps and offers a gripping look at the uncertainties, the bravado, and the often misguided decisions of these West Point-trained officers as they struggle to adapt traditional strategies to a new era of warfare.
Robert E. Lee-the South's most revered military leader-receives full credit for both his outstanding defensive maneuvers and for his remarkable achievement in holding together a disorganized and often under-equipped Confederate Army. But, Alexander also demonstrates how Lee's rigid belief in launching large-scale attacks on Union armies led inevitably to the Confederacy's defeat.
Bevin Alexander is an historian and military strategist who has written a number of critically-acclaimed books, including Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson and The Future of Warfare. He lives near Richmond, Virginia.
Library Journal
Robert E. Lee has long been considered a brilliant general, perhaps the only one in the Confederacy who had any chance of winning the Civil War. From the outset, Lee sought to fight an offensive war while other Confederate leaders preferred to fight defensively, forcing the Northern armies to come after the Confederate forces. Ironically, Lee's offensive strategies suffered from his bellicose nature. Time after time he attacked in a frontal assault rather than attempting the flanking movements that his subordinates recommended. Further, Lee failed to understand that the greater range of the Minie-ball-rifled musket made formerly reliable military tactics obsolete. Alexander, a historian and military strategist (Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson, LJ 11/1/92) contends that Lee's successes were due more to the incompetent Union generals he faced than to his own military genius. This concise, cogent examination of Lee's campaigns will appeal to Civil War buffs and scholars.--Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora