Cold Harbor

Gordon Rhea's gripping fourth volume on the spring 1864 campaign--which pitted Ulysses S. Grant against Robert E. Lee for the first time in the Civil War--vividly re-creates the battles and maneuvers from the stalemate on the North Anna River through the Cold Harbor offensive. <i>Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee May 26-June 3 1864</i> showcases Rhea's tenacious research which elicits stunning new facts from the records of a phase oddly ignored or mythologized by historians. In clear and profuse tactical detail Rhea tracks the remarkable events of those nine days giving a surprising new interpretation of the famous battle that left seven thousand Union casualties and only fifteen hundred Confederate dead or wounded. Here Grant is not a callous butcher and Lee does not wage a perfect fight. Within the pages of <i>Cold Harbor </i> Rhea separates fact from fiction in a charged evocative narrative. He leaves readers under a moonless sky with Grant pondering the eastward course of the James River fifteen miles south of the encamped armies.