For 130 years historians and military strategists have been obsessed by
the battle of Chancellorsville. It began with an audaciously planned
stroke by Union general Joe Hooker as he sent his army across the
Rappahannock River and around Robert E. Lee's lines. It ended with that
same army fleeing back in near total disarray--and Hooker's reputation
in ruins.
This splendid account of Chancellorsville--the first in more than 35
years--explains Lee's most brilliant victory even as it places the
battle within the larger canvas of the Civil War. Drawing on a wealth of
first-hand sources, it creates a novelistic chronicle of tactics and
characters while it retraces every thrust and parry of the two armies
and the fateful decisions of their commanders, from Hooker's glaring
display of moral weakness to the inspired risk-taking of Lee and
Stonewall Jackson, who was mortally wounded by friendly fire. At once
impassioned and gracefully balanced, Chancellorsville 1863 is a grand
achievement in Civil War history.
