Reading Lee: “The Perfect Man: The Mystery of Robert E. Lee”

Join us for a complimentary lecture by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library beginning at 6:30pm Friday, January 24, 2020.

“The Perfect Man: The Mystery of Robert E. Lee”

Robert E. Lee impressed everyone who met him with his dignity, his manners, his composure. But beneath that mask, Lee was a torrent of contradictory forces: of perfectionism, of a passion for independence, and for security. All of these forces come to play in the decisions he made over a lifetime. Guelzo’s lecture is a long look into the mind and spirit of the man who was once called “the marble model,” but who was actually made of much more complicated material.

DR. ALLEN C. GUELZO is the Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President(1999), Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America(2004), Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America(2008) and Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction(2012). His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasionwas a New York Timesbest seller in 2013. He is currently at work on a biography of Robert E. Lee. His website is www.allenguelzo.com.