Lee was not as heroic as I had been led to believe, but he was an interesting and mainly decent man, it seems, and worthy of honor. He was a victim or many unfair circumstances. ( )

A generally good short introduction to Robert E. Lee. But, compared to other volumes in the series, like Frady's MLK, or Keegan's Churchill, this one seems a bit chatty and gossipy, like Robert E. Lee via the old lady at the beauty shop. There is generally good enough coverage of battles until Gettysburg, then it returns to chattiness. And do we read really weird asides to modern days like that at the bottom of page 65? No. Blount's attempts to be humorous and sly and witty and Shelby Foote all at the same time makes the book less than stellar, and underscores that he is an over-rated auteur in the mold of Garrison Keillor; nobody's heard of them but the haute-beautiful people of New York who watch and listen to too much PBS and NPR, and while Blount and Keillor claim to represent the great, good, rural people of the Midwest and South, they denigrate them at every turn.

But, I digress. The appendices are pretty good, and rightly relegated to the appendices, but these should be in a book of essays, not a biography in a short-length series. Some editor at Penguin should have said, "No, Mr. Blount. You only have two hundred pages to work with, give us some more facts." Instead, we have a strange, yet insightful, attempt at psycho-history. But, it doesn't belong in this book. I mean, from p. 180: "Elvis [Presley] and his mother made a great deal over each other's feet, calling them 'sooties.' Did Robert [E. Lee] and his mother? We don't know." Really?

But, lastly, Blount recounts Lee's devotion to a sort of austere stoicism (he does not use the latter word), but fails to mention the most poignant example of this character trait: when a young mother sought Lee's advice and a blessing for her infant son, he told the mother plainly, "Teach him he must deny himself.” ( )

Really 3.5 stars. Generally good, short biography of R.E. Lee in the stellar Penguin Lives series.

Given the sheer number of Lee biographies this one seems unnecessarily slight. @ just 163 pages. Well informed, readable and stimulating. The appendices are fine except the historical psycoanalysis contained in the first, longest and aptly named, "Speculation". ( )

Blount tells the story of the Virginia soldier with humor, compassion, and honesty. While Lee was not an apologist for slavery, he wasn't the most tolerant man in the land either. He certainly had some issues to contend with, ranging from an unhappy wife to his very small feet (size 4 1/2). Something drove him to ride far from home on his horse and it wasn't the Confederacy. ( )