Plenty of other colleges and universities, of course, have histories nearly as interesting as Washington and Lee's, even if they don't number famous generals among their presidents. But hardly any put their histories on display in any engaging fashion — often the best that can be hoped for is a dry book by a retired history professor, supplemented by portraits of dead presidents in the administration building. Lee's years in Lexington, by contrast, spring to life not only in the university museum but also in a well-researched 1981 account by Charles Bracelen Flood, Lee: The Last Years (Houghton Mifflin), which was assembled partly from papers in the university archives.