Grant
2017
- political figure biographies & memoirs
- slaves
- united states army
- united states presidents
- united states generals
- united states history
- united states civil war
- united states politics
- united states government
- biography
The story
Grant is a 2017 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, written by American historian and biographer Ron Chernow. Grant, a Union general during the Civil War, served two terms as president, from 1869 to 1877. Chernow asserts that both Grant's command of the Overland campaign and his presidency have been seen in an undeservedly negative light.
What it’s like
Dense, unhurried and largely sober in register, this is a book to read at a desk with a notebook close by, the kind of biography that rewards slow evenings and a stack of library maps. Chernow's prose is clear and authoritative rather than ornamental: long, carefully sourced sentences that move steadily through letters, dispatches and newspaper accounts, with the occasional vivid image of muddy roads, smoke-filled river landings and the bare, plain rooms of a quiet, reticent man. The mood is measured and reflective, a revisionist argument conducted patiently rather than dramatically, with a reassessment of a figure long underrated building toward a more generous verdict. Its arc follows a modest, often misunderstood soldier who grows into a difficult presidency, and it treats his early struggles, his drinking and his failures with frankness and sympathy. Battle and war are described in historical detail, with casualties and campaigns recounted soberly rather than graphically, and there is no gore, no sexual content and little that is frightening; the harshest material concerns slavery, Reconstruction violence and political corruption, presented as history. It suits readers who want thoughtful, substantial nonfiction about the Civil War and Reconstruction, especially those curious about a president they may only know as a footnote.
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