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Title: Abridgement good but is nearly all military details
Review: This adridgement of Freeman's four-volume biography is certainly a popular necessity - it opens the work up to a much broader audience that would find the original too intimidating an investment of time or money. Freeman's elegant, descriptive prose is preserved and has aged remarkably well.The chief failing of this abridgement is it's imbalance in focus. It has been reduced to a study of Lee's generalship rather than a true biography. Fully three-fourths of the book is a thorough, tactical description of his four years of battle in the Civil War, with the other 59 years of his life serving as mere bookends. While these military details are fascinating and are certainly required reading for students of the conflict, the end result leaves one feeling rather at a loss for who Lee was as a husband, father, and citizen.
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