“This gray man in gray,” wrote Bruce Catton of Robert E. Lee, “rode his dappled gray horse into legend almost at once, and like all legendary figures he came before long to seem almost supernatural, a man of profound mystery.” Thirty years after the end of the Civil War, the Confederate leader was no longer merely a Virginia hero, or a Southern one; he was a national hero, revered by North and South alike. When a later generation of biographers came to try and seek out his personality, they found it almost beyond reach. Now the Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears pursues the true character of a figure who remains as elusive as he is compelling. And in an accompanying essay, Lamar Herrin, author of the novel The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee , tells how the general seized control of his book.