Cold Harbor - by Gordon C Rhea

About the Book

In his gripping fourth volume on the spring 1864 Overland campaign--which pitted Ulysses S. Grant against Robert E. Lee--Rhea vividly re-creates the battles and maneuvers from the North Anna stalemate through the Cold Harbor offensive. 11 halftones. 32 maps.

Book Synopsis

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. Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864 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 Cold Harbor, 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.

Review Quotes

Cold Harbor is a splendid book, delightful to read and rich in details. When Rhea finishes the final book, he will have written one of the finest, if not the finest, multivolume Civil War campaign study.-- "Civil War Times"

He's done it again. Gordon C. Rhea is a masterful storyteller whose books are fact driven, fast paced, and replete with color, detail, and analysis.-- "Journal of Southern History"

Rhea's genius takes us beyond the accepted stereotypes and as close to the real war as we're ever likely to get.-- "Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star"

Rhea's insights and conclusions offer a fresh interpretation of an epochal campaign. By far, this is the best account of Cold Harbor yet written.-- "Blue & Gray Magazine"

About the Author

Gordon C. Rhea is the author of On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864; The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864; The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7-12, 1864; and To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864, winner of the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award, among other books. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.