Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee was a brilliant general, a complex soul, and a Southerner to the core. Tapped by Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army in the Civil War, his Virginian roots led him to command the Confederates instead. A charismatic though reluctant leader, his military audacity and tactical genius were combined with a genuine and sorrowful solicitude for his men, as ragged and outnumbered as they were by the end of the war.

Roy Blount, Jr., one of America's canniest writers, goes beyond the haunted contradictions of Lee's character and legendary strategic prowess to explore Lee's quirky sense of humor, his illustrious but scandal-clouded ancestry, and his paradoxical humility. Every reader curious about the makeup of a man born to be a myth will love this book.
 
"[Roy Blount]... is one of America's wittiest writers." (New York Times Book Review)