Is there any good books about Robert E. Lee around?
Is there indeed.
The all-time classic biography is Douglas Southall Freeman’s seven-volume exhaustive edition.
You’d probably want instead the one-volume condensed edition, Lee.
Freeman’s biography of Lee ran to four volumes. (I have two sets purchased in the days when I was a young, * single* Civil War buff).
Freeman’s bio of George Washington was seven volumes. Freeman wrote the first six and the seventh was finished, after Freeman’s death, by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth.
Both biographies won the Pulitzer.
Hmm. I guess I was mentally lumping the four volumes of Lee with the three volumes of Lee’s Lieutenants.
All of which - and others - were written while he was the editor of the Richmond News Leader.
Maybe there were more hours in those days.
Or fewer distractions.
Between us we have a bunch of pages of postings.
After you plow through some or all of D.S. Freeman if you so choose – sorry, don’t think there are any Cliff’s Notes to help you out – I recommend Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelin Flood. (Lee only lived another 5 years after the signing at Appomattox.)
In addition to providing an insightful overview of Lee’s war career, the book details his years as President of Washington College in Lexington, VA, which was rechristened Washington & Lee University after his death.
The last chapter of this fine volume has been known to make grown men weep.
If you like fantasy/fiction, Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South is a classic. A white supremacist organization travels back in time to outfit the Confederacy with AK-47’s. It sounds stupid, but it’s really a good read.