Book Review

Here is a review for Lee by John Perry...


Lee: A Life of Virtue John Perry


You really can't expect to put the story of Robert E. Lee's life into 200 or so pages. Fortunately, John Perry's new biography of Lee doesn't try to do that.
This book (2nd in a series called "The Generals") attempts to narrow the focus of it's portrait to the area of character and virtue. It also attempts to dislodge some cultural prejudices regarding Lee in the process. Lee's sense of honor and duty have been chronicled repeatedly and, generally, without exception. Still, the examples of his humility, determination, duty, care, stewardship and his constant, though not casual, thought of his Creator are worth hearing many times over because they reflect the Savior's grace and mercy. It would be easy to go overboard in a volume like this in order to exalt the subject of the work. I found the book to be fairly even-handed in this regard. Lee's faults were shown as well, although it would seem that one of his greatest faults was to give too much latitude to the persuasion of some of his generals in strategy planning. His care for his family gets much attention, as it should, throughout the book. Obviously, the lightning rod issue with anyone of this period in American history, and particularly involved with the Confederacy, is slavery. Perry handles this area well and documents as thoroughly as possible regarding this. Lee himself sought to be a part of ending slavery rather than perpetuating it. The problem for Lee was that he felt it better for the slaves, the agrarian economy and the nation as a whole, for the emancipation to be gradual and pinned down by education rather than a sudden bombardment onto an already struggling economy by a largely unskilled labor force. The country was not patient enough to follow this path and, well, you know the rest....

A book such as this stands on the shoulders of other books which came before and Perry mentions some of those at the end of the text. This is important because while this book is a good overview of Lee's character, other books are much better in dealing with Lee's entire life or life as a soldier, engineer or academic president. Having said that, this is a great enhancement to those titles or a great starter if you're curious and hesitant to start a large volume. It will whet your appetite to learn more about a very complex man.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson for providing this book in exchange for my review.