Ethan S. Rafuse is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His previous books include McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and the Battle of Manassas.

Controversial and compelling from first page to last, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy achieves a trifecta. It affirms Lee's stature as a perceptive strategist who understood Confederate independence could only be achieved by breaking the Union's will in battle, it demonstrates the Army of the Potomac as a fighting force and its successive generals as competent commanders, and it establishes Rafuse in the front rank of a new generation of scholars applying fresh perspectives to the Civil War.

• Chapter 1: Chancellorsville and Its AntecedentsChapter 2: From the Rappahannock to the SusquehannaChapter 3: GettysburgChapter 4: Waltzing with General MeadeChapter 5: Winter and a New FoeChapter 6: The Furnace of 1864Chapter 7: To and Across the JamesChapter 8: A Mere Question of TimeChapter 9: To AppomattoxChapter 10: The Fall of the ConfederacyBibliographic Essay

Ethan S. Rafuse is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His previous books include McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and the Battle of Manassas.

Controversial and compelling from first page to last, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy achieves a trifecta. It affirms Lee's stature as a perceptive strategist who understood Confederate independence could only be achieved by breaking the Union's will in battle, it demonstrates the Army of the Potomac as a fighting force and its successive generals as competent commanders, and it establishes Rafuse in the front rank of a new generation of scholars applying fresh perspectives to the Civil War.

• Chapter 1: Chancellorsville and Its AntecedentsChapter 2: From the Rappahannock to the SusquehannaChapter 3: GettysburgChapter 4: Waltzing with General MeadeChapter 5: Winter and a New FoeChapter 6: The Furnace of 1864Chapter 7: To and Across the JamesChapter 8: A Mere Question of TimeChapter 9: To AppomattoxChapter 10: The Fall of the ConfederacyBibliographic Essay