LEE'S MAVERICK GENERAL

This portrait of the erudite professional soldier, General Daniel Harvey Hill, does much to advance his reputation as one of the important commanders of the Confederacy in America's Civil War. Through these pages we see not only Hill's bravery and decision-making ability at Seven Pines, Mechanicsville, Richmond, or South Mountain, but we gain some valuable overall view of those battles themselves---as if from a command post on some mountaintop. Perhaps even more important however is the shadow the book casts---if only slightly---over the reputations of other Confederate generals who fought alongside Hill. Some of Longstreet's claim to fame is surely put in doubt, while the internecine struggles between Robert E. Lee and ""Stonewall"" Jackson are brought into sharper relief. Hill's letters on the two latter men, and his testimony in Army hearings, give Jackson greater credit for the work toward the final defense of the South against Grant. The book ends with Hill's postwar publishing struggles against the Reconstruction, and is amply supported by lengthy notes and scholarly references. In all, enlightening, entertaining, and written by a skilled hand.