Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (Hardcover)

by Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Author)
Key Phrases: wartime papers, Robert Lee, Mary Lee, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Robert E. Lee remains one of the most revered figures in U.S. history. For southerners he remains the personifiation of the Lost Cause, a military genius and courtly aristocrat whose nobility of spirit was worthy of the intense devotion he elicited from his men and admirers. Even Americans who despised the cause for which Lee fought express admiration for his military acumen, compassion, and kindness. But both in his personal and public life, Lee was more complicated than the iconic image suggests. Historian Pryor uses a compilation of Lee's private correspondence, adding her own commentaries, to present a more balanced but scrupulously fair portrait. There are surprises here. As commandant at West Point, Lee was far from beloved by cadets, who resented his authoritarian ways. Although Lee had his doubts about the utility of slavery as an institution, his views on race relations were hardly enlightened Still, his letters and Pryor's analysis reinforce our appreciation of Lee's best qualities, including his personal warmth, devotion to friends and family, and sense of fairness. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“ An unorthodox, critical, and engaging biography [that] impressively captures Lee’s character and personality.”
—The Boston Globe

“ Pryor moves onto important historical and interpretive terrain with a far more discerning and critical eye than most of her scholarly or popular predecessors.”
—The New Republic --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (May 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670038296
• ISBN-13: 978-0670038299
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #418,060 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good look at the life of Robert E. Lee , May 24, 2007

By	JAD (The Sunshine State) - See all my reviews

For those who wish to have a good look at the life of Robert E. Lee in one volume, this is the book to use as a basic biography and guide. Author Elizabeth Brown Pryor has taken letters written by Lee as the springboard for each of the chapters of the book, corresponding with the chapters in his life. This gives the reader a chance to read and sense the tone of the celebrated General, in his own words. Surely, this was not an easy task since there are about 10,000 known letters of Robert E. Lee scattered hither and yon. To find, read and cull the best of these must have been both Herculean and painstaking. One suspects it has also been a labor of love.

Those with the sketchiest knowledge of Lee will remember that his father was a Revolutionary War era hero, that he had an almost unparalleled record as a West Point cadet, that he married into the Custis and therefore Washington family, making him not only one of the First Families of Virginia but also of the First Family of America. Of course best known is Lee's choice to side with state and kindred during the Civil War and the resultant verve and disappointment on the field of battle.

In this 200th birthday anniversary year, Pryor fleshes out these facts with a nuanced portrait of a complex man whose personal and professional life are not as easily summarized as one might suppose. Dealing with those who came before her who served as Lee's uncritical biographers, Pryor demythologizes Lee in a respectful way, allowing him to be not only three dimensional but also multifaceted. She also gives an outstanding précis of aspects of the Lee hagiography and misconceptions that have persisted through repetition. It would be correct to call Pryor's approach even-handed. She clearly appreciates that Lee was a towering figure in his time; she also allows the reader to see his eccentricities.

The book is excellent on some challenging subjects such as Lee's attitude toward slavery and how it compares to the attitudes of his contemporaries. Pryor also gives us an account of Lee's unabashed affection for women. The chapter on Lee's tenure as head of West Point speaks volumes about how Lee was perceived by those who observed him as a professional soldier preparing others to be professional soldiers.

The author's description of what went right and what went wrong at some of the key battles of the war, notably Gettysburg, are well done, and will provide both the general reader and the Civil War expert good starting points for conversation. Even so, I must confess that the second part of the book was for me slower-going than the first half. Whether that is due to Lee, Pryor or me, I am not sure. Nor am I sure what to conclude about Robert E. Lee--a man of honor (rightly placed or mis-placed), of brilliance (and obstinacy) in peace and in war, and a man who took a road less traveled by which made all the difference.

The book has many fine illustrations scattered throughout the text, including many portraits and photographs of Lee from youth to old age.

Elizabeth Brown Pryor has previously given us a similar life of Clara Barton. Pryor is both an award-winning historian and senior diplomat in the American Foreign Service, having served as a senior adviser to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe of the U.S. Congress.

36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good work!, June 13, 2007

By	James Durney (Tampa Bay area) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Is their person more of an icon than Robert E. Lee? Toward the end of the war, he was the living symbol of the Confederacy's hope. After his death, he became the Christ-like central figure in Myth the Lost Cause, the "marble man" of history. The Politically Correct Myth of the Civil War insistently attacks him as a traitor and slave owner while trying to show his feet of clay. Biographies tend to be sugarcoated stories of his life, denouncements or pseudo-psychological studies of his "mental problems".

This book contains none of the above and allows the Lees among others to speak for themselves. The format of each chapter is a letter or excerpts from letters that introduce the subject followed by an intelligent and balanced discussion. Those looking to worship "General Lee" or those looking to damn him, will not be happy. However, if you wish to gain an understanding of the man, this is an excellent book. The author is neither judgmental nor loving. She presents Lee within the confines of his class, training and the times. This helps the reader understand the decisions made and his actions. What emerges is an intelligent, ambitious family man doing what he feels is best.

On of the nicest items in the book is the author's recognition of the pseudo-psychological studies and why they fail to explain the man. While this in not a major item in the book, it shows a sense of fairness lacking in some books. It is hard not to admire Robert E. Lee and the author clearly admires him. However, I never felt that this admiration interferes with her honest evaluation of him. After reading the book, I agreed with the observation "Cousin Robert is only human" and had all the contradictions of the species.

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Trees Died to Create this Book!, May 6, 2008

By	William P. Vallante (Commack, New York United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (Paperback)

"There is indeed a certain childish willfulness in the American mind that insists on chastising the people of the past for not being like them, or else pretending that they were. Which is a certain way NOT to learn anything from history." ---Dr. Clyde Wilson

Put it this way - if you are the type of person Dr. Wilson is describing, you're going to love this book! If not, you'll be wishing you had paid for it in Confederate bills instead of U.S. dollars.

The book itself contains roughly 175 pages of footnotes, bibliography and index. There are 50 pages of actual letters, some of which have already been published and others of which are not even by Lee, but by other people. If you're planning on seeing 500 pages of newly discovered letters, forget it. The fewer than 50 pages of new letters by Lee himself will leave you grossly disappointed. Finally, we have 425 pages of Ms. Pryor's perseverative and monotonous interpretations of those letters, which I suppose is the "meat" of the book.

According to Ms. Pryor, Lee did not release the Custis slaves immediately. The terms of the will specified "within 5 years" of the elder Custis' death (in 1857). Lee fulfilled that mandate by manumitting them in 1862. This apparently wasn't satisfactory enough for Ms. Pryor as she repeatedly drones on about Lee's failure to understand how the slaves felt.

Ms. Pryor is also critical of Lee for expecting the slaves to actually work!? Oh horror! Oh horror!

Of course, there is the matter of several slaves being whipped by Lee, something which has never been conclusively proven. Like a second rate shyster, Ms. Brown does her best to drum up the case against him.

According to Ms. Pryor, Lee had no appreciation of other cultures and saw nothing worthwhile in the Mexican culture when he was there during the Mexican war. I'm wondering what Pryor expected Lee, an educated, well-to-do man from one of Virginia's first families, to say when he was in Mexico? "Gee! What lovely mud huts!?" I'm pretty sure that Mexico didn't have Grand Melia and Paradisus or any other resorts at that time, so I can't figure out what Ms. Pryor expected him to see in the place? I suppose to understand her reasoning, or her expectations, one would have to refer back to Dr. Wilson's quote above.

Also, according to Ms. Pryor, Lee had "poor cross cultural communications skills", a term apparently taken from today's lexicon of multicultural drivel. In this case she was referring to his "communication", or lack of it, with the Comanches. I ran this past a native American friend of mine and he almost fell over laughing. I'm not sure there were too many folks at the time who had good cross cultural communication skills with the Comanches of that era, as this particular group wasn't usually given to such things themselves. Would that it were possible to transport Ms. Pryor back in time to the 1850s and observe how her "skills" with the Comanches would fare? I would be taking bets on how long she kept her pretty blond hair.

In sum, this book, touted though it is by most "contemporary" historians, is one more example of the sham that has become what we used to call, "the field of history".

If you feel compelled somehow to read it, buy it used and pay as little as possible. When you're through with it, it will make for an excellent target at the firing range.