Changes

=== Top Ten ===

This abridged version, masterfully edited by Richard Harwell, in no less brilliant than Freeman’s 1934 four edition masterpiece. Through meticulous research and an easy writing style, the author introduces Lee to the reader as a nuanced and complicated leader. The events and regrets of his early life offer a great deal of insight into the mind of this brilliant tactician, inspired leader, and complex man. This is the standard by which all other accounts of Lee’s life are measured.

Eric Foner, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039334066X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=039334066X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=640a6965ec70b88eeb20bef4fc91f207 The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery]'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).

This Pulitzer Prize winner is not merely another biography of Lincoln. Eric Foner focuses this biography specifically on issues of slavery as they related to Lincoln. The author’s sole focus of the book is to trace his subject’s progression in his opinions of slavery. Biographical information is provided in the context of how certain events shaped Lincoln’s politics and to monitor his evolution of ideas. As he was a prolific writer, Lincoln left an abundance of facts with which to work and Foner delightfully disseminates those facts into a polarization of Lincoln and the peculiar institution of the South. Aside from Lincoln’s personal feelings on the matter, Foner also covers the delicate dance he had to perform in order to placate abolitionists, Radical Republicans, and both houses of congress. Another masterful work by Foner.

[[File:meagher.jpg|thumbnail|250px|<i>The Irish General: Thomas Francis Meagher</i> by Paul Wylie]]

From being a hero in Ireland to the falling out with his Irish brethren in American, Thomas Francis Meagher was a complex and flawed leader during the American Civil War. Meagher organized and led the famed Irish Brigade to notoriety through his inspired orations and appeal to Irish-Americans that the survival of the Union was tantamount to an independent Ireland. The enigmatic general was more than a leader of a military brigade, he served as the kingpin of the Irish-American communities in the North. Paul Wylie traces Meagher’s life from being a lad in Ireland, through the Civil War, his decline in the eyes of his Irish followers, and finally his territorial governorship in Montana Territory, including his mysterious death. With all of his flaws, Meagher was at one time adored by Irish-Americans and Wylie does an admiral job of reconciling the conflicting opinions of Meagher’s critics. This is a lesser-known gem of Civil War biographies that paints a nuanced portrait of the bombastic Irish general.