Not much is written about Lee, the man, and this book solves that problem. Excellent.

Magnificent
5+ Stars.
I originally read Douglas Southall Freeman's 4 Volume biography of Robert E. Lee 35 years ago. I was so impressed with both the author and the General that I have been a Civil War buff ever since. Recently, after rereading James Robertson's biography on General A.P. Hill, my interest in Lee was again piqued and I picked up the abridged version of Douglas Freeman's Pulitzer Prize winning classic to refresh my history of Marse Robert. Although I was walking old literary ground, I was amazed at how wonderful it was to again read about the amazing life of one of America's true icons. Absolutely magnificent in all respects. Richard Harwell's abridgement of the 4-volume biography was masterful in every since. Harwell captured both the beauty and depth of Freeman's style without diminishing any of the wonder or essence of General Robert E. Lee the man and General. Extremely well crafted in all respects that none of the Freeman magic was lost or diluted.
Freeman's style was to view the Civil War events through Lee's eyes, ears, and available information rather than examine events through post war after-the-fact analysis: What did General Lee know at the time with the information he had and could "feel". Without going into an in-depth biographical review of General Lee, suffice it to say Mr. Freeman captured the essence of both Robert E. Lee the man and general. He artfully examines how Lee reacted to various situation and how his prior experiences and nature influenced both his decisions and personal relationships. All in all the absolute best biography ever written on General Robert E. Lee and a requirement in any Civil War expert or buff's library.
Note: The final 4 chapters are an incredible summation of what made Lee, Lee. Freeman gets to the nub of it all in beautifully written concise statements. The most amazing thing of all is that the characteristics of what made General Robert E. Lee great are as timely today as they were back then. In the pantheon of great Americans he stands tall, very tall.
Must read for anyone interested in the Civil War. Harwell's abridged version of Freeman's masterpiece is wonderful and although 600+ pages is really a rather quick read due to the excellent writing. I found it very hard to put down and read the entire book in only 3 days. Do yourself a favor and read a magnificent biography on a true American icon.

I preface my remarks by explaining that I am an avid reader of the history of the period from pre-revolution to post civil war.

This book is very readable and not only offers concise detail but also gives terrific insight into the state of the Union and Confederacy during Lee's life. I couldn't put it down, and have since ordered others as a gift.

Lee was truly a one of kind gentleman and American, and had Virginia not been in the south or neutral, he ultimately would have led the Union forces.

It is a must read.

"Lee" is an excellent one-volume abridgment of Douglas Southall Freeman's epic four-volume life of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Freeman's original work, published in 1934, was based on over two decades of research into Lee's correspondence and military dispatches, and clearly benefited from contacts with friends, family members, and veterans of the Civil War who had known Lee in life. Richard Harwell's abridgment, at nearly 600 pages, is still an heroic length, but far more managable for the general reader.

The Lee that emerges from this biography is a man who very consciously drew his sense of duty and responsibility from his Revolutionary War forebears. His father, "Light House" Harry Lee, was one of George Washington's cavalry commanders. His wife was a step-granddaughter of Washington himself. Lee knew genteel poverty as a youth, and the burden of caring for younger siblings and an invalid mother. Lee finished second in his class at West point, the result of the disciplined application of an excellent mind and the conscious molding of a self-controlled personality into an officer and a gentlemen in the very best sense of those terms.

Lee's exploits in the Civil War have overshadowed his long apprenticeship in arms, following his graduation from West Point in 1829. As an engineer officer, Lee spent the pre-war years working on a variety of military and civil engineering projects around the young United States, learning the challenges of planning and logistics. His superb performance in the Mexican War on the staff of Commanding General Winfield S. Scott made his reputation in the Army, and gave him opportunities for line assignments in the cavalry he would otherwise have not seen. However, the glacial pace of peacetime promotion prevailed, and by 1861, Lee was only a Colonel. His talents were such that he was immediately considered for general officer command as the Civil War loomed.

Lee's decision to go with his native state of Virginia at the breakup of the Union is one that may be opaque to present-day readers; Freeman does his best to explain Lee's reasons. Freeman's narrative likewise does justice to Lee's increasingly central role in the conduct of the Confederate military effort. The bulk of this volume covers the Civil War, and Freeman does not spare Lee his faults in what was by all accounts a remarkable effort against the odds. Lee was an exceptional strategist and logistician, but his preference for delegating battlefield management to subordinates cost him in a number of battles, especially later in the war as less experienced men took command. Likewise, Lee paid a price for his reluctance to enforce his will on stubborn subordinates. Freeman highlights Lee's conduct of civil-military relations with the Confederate Government in Richmond.

Freeman's account of Lee's brief life after the Civil War may be especially illuminating of the man. Lee accepted the military outcome of the war and got on with his life, in the face of grief over losses, personal poverty, and sometimes studied insults from victorious Unionists. He lent his still considerable talents as an administrator, and his reputation, to small Washington College, saving it from extinction and turning it into a first-rate college for the young men of the South.

Freeman's scholarship, especially in his analysis of the Civil War, is now somewhat dated. However this book is still very highly recommended for its insights into the personality and character of Robert E. Lee, man and gentleman.

From the time I was a toddler close to 60 years ago, I was taught that Robert E. Lee was, except for Jesus Christ, the greatest man who ever lived. A lifetime of study has confirmed my parents' opinion...I am NOT unbiased about General Lee. If Robert E. Lee was the greatest man, Douglas Souhthall Freeman was the greatest Civil War author, and he's not unbiased, either.

Anyone reading this probably already knows Lee's story...born of a great mother and a useless father whose earlier greatness was long forgotten... raised in aristocratic poverty....West Point with no demerits...30+ years in the Army as an engineer, with brief combat in Mexico...offered command of the Union Army...a man who cried as he followed Virginia out of the Union...took over the Army of Northern Virginia a year into the war and made it, man for man, the greatest fighting force the world has ever known...held off a vastly larger, and better supplied, Army for three years...surrendered, then set the example for his men in becoming citizens of one nation...accepted the Presidency of a small college, and, in the five and a half years he had left, started it on the road to becoming the world-class school it is today...served God to the end, suffering his final heart attack while running a Vestry meeting at the Church pastored by one of his old generals.

In 1915, a young newspaperman named Douglas Southall Freeman accepted a contract to write a 75,000 word biography of General Lee. Born in Lynchburg, the son of one of Lee's troops, he had learned about the General at a young age. Twenty years after starting, Dr. Freeman finally finished his 1,000,000 word biography, and saw it published in four volumes; those four volumes ARE definitive, and the greatest biography in the English language.

Richard Harwell, who knew Dr. Freeman, made this one volume abridgment in the 1960's [and also a very fine one volume version of Freeman's "George Washington"]....it is very probably the best one volume study of Lee available, for which Harwell would give ALL the credit to Dr. Freeman. OK, what is lost in the abridging? Fair question if you're spending your money for this...I'm going to round numbers. Freeman takes 400 pages for the first 54 years [100 for Mexico], 1,600 for the war, and 400 for the last five and a half years. Harwell has roughly 100 [27 for Mexico], 400 and 100. Lost are the footnotes, the appendecies, the bibliography, much of the dialog, and most of the redundencies....

Should you buy, and read this? Definitely. There are a LOT of one volume biographies of General Lee, ranging from kid's versions, to good, bad, and indifferent. Two or three are by men who actually met him. Harwell has done a superb job. Now the real question....do you need to read the whole four volumes? If you are a poor soul like me, you already have. Your best bet would be a used set, but if affordable, they may not be in good shape, and if in good shape, they may be expensive. [I was lucky to find a decent set for $35]. ["Lee's Lieutenants" is easy to find at a good price, and "George Washington" is impossible]. There were badly overpriced paperbacks available, but I'm not sure they still are; there is a beautiful leather bound edition in print, but you can imagine the price. The four volumes are definitive, and very readable....while you're deciding, read this first...

I enjoyed reading this book but it was sometimes hard to figure out what happenned in each of the battles since there was typically only one map for each battle. In fact the map for gettysburg did not even show where any of the troops were at any time during the battle.

If you want to read this book I would recommend having maps of the battlefields that you could refer to. This would help you figure out what is going on better.

This was purchased for a book report. The book was a great source of information.

I have become more and more interested in the Civil War and one of the key questions for me was, "Why did Lee choose to join the South despite his oath to the United States?" That was why I got this book and on that point I think this book answered that question for me... Virginia was populated by so many Lee's and Carters that to desert Virginia was not just turning his back on the State or the Confederacy, but turning his back on his family and kin.

Along the way in this abridged book, there were some interesting new discoveries for me, foremost of which was that Lee considered McClellan to be the North's top general. Given the seemingly universally accepted historical view that McClellan was overly cautious, and that Lee used his knowledge of McClellan's overcautiousness to great advantage, it surprised me to know that Lee had higher regard for him than for Grant.

As for the rest of the book, it was obviously a painstakingly researched work that gave rich detail about Lee's life. It won a well deserved Pulitzer for the author and was a remarkable achievement. There were however, for me, a couple disappointments along the way in this otherwise great biography.

1. After researching Lee for 20 years, I think the author was overly biased toward resolving any disputed issues about Lee's battles in favor of Lee. For example, Longstreet's reluctance to launch straight forward frontal attacks at Gettysburg was described in a tone that made Longstreet appear petty and stubborn rather than as someone who truly felt (as was subsequently proved correct) that frontal assault would be costly and less certain of success. Longstreet's refusal to flank the Roundtops instead of following Lee's plan for frontal assault was explained as petulant adherence to the letter of Lee's plan and not the spirit. In fact, Longstreet had addressed this issue with Lee already and Lee had made it clear to him that flanking was not to be tried. The point being that throughout the book Lee was nearly worshiped by the author so that he seemed more of an Olympian than a real man and those who opposed Lee, were lesser men motivated by pettiness or incompetence.

2. The descriptions of the battle scenes were hard to follow. There were few maps of the battles so that, unless you were already familiar with the topography and dispositions of the units, it became confusing.

3. Maybe the biggest disappointment for me was that there was so little of Lee's own words in the biography. Very little of what he actually said or wrote was included. After reading the entire book, I still didn't have a sense of the man through his own voice. Also, there were very few opportunities to hear opinions from the people who Lee loved, lived with, or worked with or for. Everyone who did talk about Lee, the man, had nothing but the most glowing praise. Did he have no detractors?

4. Sometimes important contextual information that would have been important to the story of Lee's decision making was excluded. This may be because of the abridgement, or because the story was about Lee's generalship with the Army of Northern Virginia, but I would have thought that greater mention of Sherman's efforts or of Vicksburg's fall, were warranted because these efforts would have had important implications for Lee in deciding the disposition of his troops and use of his resources.

Despite these minor disappointments with the book, it was a great addition to my understanding of Lee and of the Civil War. While Lee must certainly have had his faults, his self control, discipline and devotion to duty, family and principles are made very clear in this book. Clearly his example is one that all of us (North and South) would do well to emulate.

This book was a fantastic education on Robert E. Lee. General Lee was not just a Confederate hero, but an all-American hero. He had a character that all men would do well to emulate. It is too bad that his birthday is not a national holiday. Thank you for reading this review.

This adridgement of Freeman's four-volume biography is certainly a popular necessity - it opens the work up to a much broader audience that would find the original too intimidating an investment of time or money. Freeman's elegant, descriptive prose is preserved and has aged remarkably well.

The chief failing of this abridgement is it's imbalance in focus. It has been reduced to a study of Lee's generalship rather than a true biography. Fully three-fourths of the book is a thorough, tactical description of his four years of battle in the Civil War, with the other 59 years of his life serving as mere bookends. While these military details are fascinating and are certainly required reading for students of the conflict, the end result leaves one feeling rather at a loss for who Lee was as a husband, father, and citizen.

Engrossing, exhaustive bio on one of the most fascinating men in U.S. history. Lee is hard to know, many authors have tried to speculate what made him tick, but he is a bit of an enigma. The author does a fine job of giving the reader a real education on Lee. Honestly, you don't need to be a Civil War scholar, to enjoy this well researched book. Lee was a man who believed in God and country, exceled at West Point, and was a man of letters, but at the same time he turned his back on the country of his birth, which he had sworn a oath to..to say Lee had honor is a paradox.

No doubt D.S. Freeman was a great writer. No doubt that Freeman was even a good historian. However, every Civil War historian worth his salt knows that while Freeman's biography of Lee may be the place to start to read about the General, it is not the place to finish. While there probably isn't still a definitive biography of Lee, one should be wary of just reading Freeman's work. While Freeman did spend almost his entire life researching Lee, his idol worship of Lee gets in the way of serious scholarship. Surely Lee is not quite the imperfect person that later biographers set out to prove, nor was he the perfect person that Freeman wrote about. He was a person, with great things about him, faults, and all the rest. While Lee does not deserve to be run through the mud just to tarnish his image, one should probably read Freeman's bio, T.L. Connelly's The Marble Man, and Emory Thomas' bio of Lee to get a fuller picture. Freeman's work is exhaustively researched and is very well written, but reads more like idolatry than biography.

I am so thankful for McPherson's abridgement of Freeman's four-volume set on Lee. Without it, I doubt I would have ever endeavored to tackle Freeman's entire work. However, I did feel I could absorb this abridgement and I was correct.

Those that religiously study Lee and/or the American Civil War may find the four-volume set more to their taste for the more thorough information. But for those of us who simply enjoy the subject, this abridgment will serve us well.

After reading this book I came away with a sense of understanding the man and the challenges and struggles he faced personally and militarily. I left it's pages with a respect for Lee and an opinion that more of us today would be well served to follow his personal example of dignity and sense of purpose.