Embattled Rebel
James M. McPherson
Penguin Group, USA
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <em>Battle Cry of Freedom</em>, a powerful new reckoning with Jefferson Davis as military commander of the Confederacy<br><br>“The best concise book we have on the subject… McPherson is… our most distinguished scholar of the Civil War era.”&nbsp;—<em>The New York Times Book Review</em><br>&nbsp;<br>History  has not been kind to Jefferson Davis. Many Americans of his own time  and in later generations considered him an incompetent leader, not to  mention a traitor. Not so, argues James M. McPherson. In <em>Embattled Rebel</em>,  McPherson shows us that Davis might have been on the wrong side of  history, but that it is too easy to diminish him because of his cause’s  failure. Gravely ill throughout much of the Civil War, Davis  nevertheless shaped and articulated the principal policy of the  Confederacy—the quest for independent nationhood—with clarity and force.  He exercised a tenacious hands-on influence in the shaping of military  strategy, and his close relationship with Robert E. Lee was one of the  most effective military-civilian partnerships in history.<br><br>Lucid and concise, <em>Embattled Rebel</em> presents a fresh perspective on the Civil War as seen from the desk of the South’s commander in chief.