Grant

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one in every of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.

 

Ulysses S. Grant’s life has sometimes been misunderstood. All too typically he’s caricatured as a persistent loser and a clumsy businessman, or because the triumphant however brutal Union normal of the Civil Battle. However these stereotypes do not come near capturing him, as Chernow reveals in his masterful biography, the primary to offer an entire understanding of the final and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying velocity and frequency.

 

Earlier than the Civil Battle, Grant was flailing. His enterprise ventures had ended dismally, and regardless of distinguished service within the Mexican Battle he ended up resigning from the military in shame amid recurring accusations of drunkenness. However in warfare, Grant started to appreciate his exceptional potential, hovering by the ranks of the Union military, prevailing on the battle of Shiloh and within the Vicksburg marketing campaign, and in the end defeating the legendary Accomplice normal Robert E. Lee. Alongside the best way, Grant endeared himself to President Lincoln and have become his most trusted normal and the strategic genius of the warfare effort. Grant’s navy fame translated right into a two-term presidency, however one tormented by corruption scandals involving his closest employees members.

Extra essential, he sought freedom and justice for black Individuals, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and incomes the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who referred to as him “the vigilant, agency, neutral, and smart protector of my race.” After his presidency, he was once more introduced low by a dashing younger swindler on Wall Road, solely to resuscitate his picture by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, that are acknowledged as a masterpiece of the style.

 

With lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds the threads that bind these disparate tales collectively, shedding new gentle on the person whom Walt Whitman described as “nothing heroic… and but the best hero.” Chernow’s probing portrait of Grant’s lifelong battle with alcoholism transforms our understanding of the person on the deepest stage. That is America’s biggest biographer, bringing movingly to life one in every of our most interesting however most underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography,
Grant is a grand synthesis of painstaking analysis and literary brilliance that is sensible of all sides of Grant’s life, explaining how this easy Midwesterner might without delay be so atypical and so extraordinary.

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