Lee's Terrible Swift Sword: From Antietam to Chancellorsville: An Eyewitness History

Here Wheeler powerfully retells the ever-new drama of the great battles of the Southern armies, which, until Gettysburg, made the North tremble. Using letters from soldiers, housewives, adjutants and generals and other accounts of participants or observers, Wheeler assembles a fluid and moving story of the battles, the stakes and the heroes. The love of his soldiers for Gen. Lee, the charm and dash of Jeb Stuart and the tragedy of George MacClellan are all evoked with the lost eloquence of the common citizen of that time. Although Wheeler ( Witness to Gettysburg ) draws on familiar sources without attribution, there is a good bibliography. And while the book does not have the sweep and majesty of Bruce Catton's Civil War classics, which used much the same method, it is a fine record of a time that, on both sides of the struggle, ``tried men's souls.'' Illustrations not seen by PW. Military Book Club main selection. (June)