Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If I could give this six stars, I would. It’s not easy to make a fact-filled, well reasoned expose engrossing, but Ty Seidule has succeeded. This was fascinating from cover to cover. Seidule was raised in the South and revered Robert E. Lee as a kind of demi-god. He believed, heart and soul, in the myth of the “lost cause”: that the Civil War was fought for some honorable reason, not to continue slavery. This myth includes the idea that Robert E. Lee was a brilliant general, but that the Confederates lost because the United States Army had more resources. Later in life, as a professor emeritus at West Point, and a colonel in the U.S. Army, Seidule began to see that the historical evidence did not support what he had been taught, that much of it had been completely fabricated, which led him to question why these myths regarding the Civil War were so commonly believed in the South. My grandparents lived in South Carolina, where, as a child, I spent a lot of time in the 1960s and 1970s. Racism was evident everywhere. In spite of my experiences in the Deep South, I never heard the myth of the lost cause, or knew of the reverence many felt towards Robert E. Lee. Until I read this book, I never thought of Robert E. Lee as anyone special, just another defeated confederate general who fought against the United States to continue enslaving human beings. I never knew there was any controversy about this. This book opened my eyes to the existence of these deeply held beliefs stemming from the defeat of the Confederacy. This book is exactly what is needed for this time in history. Last week, a mob of insurrectionists, many of them white supremacists, full of fury, stormed the U.S. Capitol, threatening the members of Congress and the Vice President, desperate to overturn the election of Joseph Biden. It was obvious that many of these people held extremely strong beliefs that baffled me. As I read this, I had multiple “aha moments”. So much was illuminated about the roots of this hate. I cannot recommend this book enough. It astonished and enlightened me, while keeping me engrossed until the end. I plan to urge all my friends to read this as soon as possible. The survival of the U.S. may depend on its citizens understanding the underlying beliefs that create and support racism.