Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Lee's Lieutenants is the most in-depth, comprehensive study of the officers of the Army of Northern Virginia that I have ever read. Not only are the officers we here so much about, like Jackson, Longstreet, Stuart, D.H. and A.P. Hill adequately covered, but other brave and dependable officers like Early, Rodes, Pender, Ramseur, Hampton, Fitz Lee, Hood, Pelham, Alexander, Mahone and countless others including staff members of the major officers, are all given due credit and attention. One of my favorite officers of the confederate command was the young Georgian by the name of John B. Gordon. Gordan was one of those rare men who never had formal military training, but gained such a reputation on the field that as the war progressed, he became one of Lee's most trusted and able officers. The ANV had the advantage of good officers, but as the long, bloody war progressed, so many of these fine officers from the ranks of colonel to lieutenant general were killed. Freeman covers the situation in detail in the latter part of the book. The army fought its way to the very end. At this point it was an army of starving troops, few capable officers, and shattered divisions, brigades, and regiments. A detailed book that covers the officers, the battles, the strategies, and the devotion of the fighting men of the South. A must read for any student of the Civil War. I do agree with the reader who stated that the maps were not all that good.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and readable.
Review: My uncle had read the three volume series of Mr. Freeman's work on Robert E. Lee's generals and wanted me to do the same. If I start something I like to finish it and I just didn't want to conquer the couple thousand pages in the three volumes so I opted for the one volume abridgement. It is well written, a classic of Civil War history, and gave great insight into the minds and actions of the Confederate military leadership. From reading the introduction this abridgement was made possible not by excising the main text, but by eliminating a majority of the voluminous notes and addendum material present in the three volume series. I don't know what I missed, but what remained was fascinating, extremely readable, and well recommended. At this point I would be very interested in acquiring and reading the three volume set.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the great major works on the Civil War
Review: This is one of the great works on the Civil War, and certainly the best book about the Army of Northern Virginia available. Abridged here in one volume, this work is more of a collective biography than anything. In fact, in could be called a biography of the army, as the focus of the book is not only on the general officers of the army but also on many of the men and lesser officers. The work is superbly written, with a very engaging narrative style. This is one of those rare works (especially in history) where you get so engrossed in the narrative you forget you are reading. After laying out and describing a battle in detail, Freeman proceeds to analyze it, giving special attention to the performance of each of the major players in the fight (from the commanding general down to brigadiers or even colonels) and providing an interpretation as to why each man's performance was so brilliant or so foolish. He treats other aspects as well, such as the effects of the battle on morale and strategy, as well as the political ramifications of each fight. Throughout it all, Freeman manages to remain both objective and fair. Thanks to Freeman's incredible narrative talent, the reader follows the 'life' of this tragic army from its debut at Manassas as an inexperienced but willing group of men, through the evolution to a veteran army and into a hardened and determined fighting body, and the eventual decline of that body until all that remains is a skeletal image of former greatness, a band of hearty and loyal men who surrender at Appomattox because the shedding of their blood will no longer benefit their cause. You can really feel the emotion and the desperation of the cause as Freeman describes it, and you can see the increasing burden on Lee and his lieutenants as it becomes more and more difficult to replace fallen officers after each major battle. I have two complaints about this book, both of which detract from its greatness but do not change the fact that it is one of the best Civil War books I've read. The first is the very poor maps, which are confusing and seldom show the position of the armies involved in the engagement. The second problem concerns the treatment of the army from Gettysburg on. Beginning with that battle, most of the army's operations are glazed over very inadequately, with little detail and with but a shade of the former attention to detail. Treatment of the battles of Gettysburg and Cold Harbor are especially pathetic. I don't know if this is the fault of Freeman or of Sears (who did the abridgement), but whosever it is, it hurts the flow of the narrative. If the last two years of the war could have been treated with as much painstaking detail as the first half the war was, this would be a nearly perfect book.
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