Grant Hardcover – Illustrated, October 10, 2017

I was raised in North Carolina.(My great grandfather was captured at the bloody angle at Spotsylvania Courthouse) and thus had the traitional southern notion that Grant won most of his acclaim by being better supplied and having so many more troops than his opponents. I have always been a history buff, having read most of Mr Chernow’s previous books and many more, but this book changed my mind on a number of issues and convinced me that I had not given Mr Grant the acclaim he is due. The appropriate analogy, I believe,is that if Mr Lincoln was the engineer driving the ship of state during the war, Mr Grant was certainly the train plugging through and getting the work done. This book also disabused me in it’s 1000 pages of. my previous notion that states rights had much of anything to do with causing the war because I remember James Longstreet being quoted about never having heard of the term several years after the war was over. As for Grant’s presidency, he is remembered for all the corruption, and while it’s true that he probably couldn’t recognize a flim flam man when he saw him , the federal government was growing exponentially at the time and he personally was always honorable. There well might have been no reconstruction to speak of unless he hadn’t personally seen to it and made it happen. His story reminds me a little of the current confederate monument controversy. Most of them were put up long after the war was over and were put up largely by public officials looking To rewrite the history of a glorious and chivalrous past that in truth wasn’t really so glorious or chivalrous. It was really eye opening to me to read about how much Grant was revered in both the north and south while he lived and if you don’t shed a few tears while reading the last chapter, as I did, then you are truly hard- hearted.i really enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to anyone for it’s fresh take on an old subject.

If there’s an afterlife, I see Ron Chernow meeting Ulysses Grant and saying to him, “Hello there, General. I made you come alive for a whole new generation of Americans,” and Grant will smile and reply, “I know. Thank you!”In Chernow’s highly entertaining, highly readable biography, Grant becomes a flesh and blood, 3-dimensional, complex force of nature. In fact, he presents the whole, colorful mid-19th Century America in vivid hues, especially Grant’s numerous Civil War battles. And the people who were part of Grant’s life, some decent and attractive, some scurrilous and repellant, are sharply drawn. Chernow does away with rumor, gossip, mystery, and myth to give us Grant the boy, the youth, the young lieutenant, the general, the president, the seer, and finally the greatest American memoir writer of the 19th Century. And as for the book’s length, forget about it: those 900+ pages go by too quickly. You’ll close the book with a slight feeling of closing the book on a friend and wishing the experience had lasted longer.

As someone who loves history, I have a terrible confession to make: Grant is the first Ron Chernow book I've ever read. It will certainly not be the last. Chernow's Grant is meticulously researched, well-written, with an easy style and flow that make a biography feel less like a lecture and more like an intimate conversation. He provides descriptions and details that bring the time period and the people to vivid life.Grant was a complex man: both brilliant and naive; overly trusting in civilian life while able to perfectly predict what others would do on the battlefield; a man who claimed to have no great political ambitions yet was a rare (at the time) two term president. Chernow reminds us of the personal connections of the generals of both the North and South- Grant attended West Point and fought in the Mexican War alongside William T. Sherman, Robert E Lee, and a veritable who's who of later Civil War leaders. The best man at his wedding was James Longstreet, who would go on to be a great Southern general in the war. Chernow also brings front and center Grant's hard work for African Americans, supporting the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, with equality and voting rights among his lifelong crusades. While Lincoln is remembered in American history as the President who ended slavery, readers of Grant will see that President U.S. Grant should be remembered as a tireless proponent of civil rights and militant enemy of the Ku Klux Klan.Chernow doesn't turn away from Grant's failures in civilian life: his poverty before rejoining the army for the Civil War, his constant struggle with alcoholism, or Grant's repeated mistakes in trusting the wrong people in matters of finance- and occasionally in government. Grant's personal traits: pride, stubbornness, loyalty among others are shown as what made him the greatest general of his time, but also caused a steep learning curve as President.Readers of Stephen W. Sears' Lincoln's Lieutenants will find this a perfect companion to their understanding of the generals of the Civil War, their successes and failures, radically different personalities, and their relationships with Lincoln. It continues to amaze me how individual personalities and personal ambitions shape the course of military history.Fans of history, biographies, and military history will rejoice in this new biography of General Grant- which will stand unchallenged as his definitive biography for a long time. An easy, flowing narrative, Ron Chernow's Grant will change the average American's view of Grant forever.

Ron Chernow has written a magisterial, but eminently readable, 959-page account of the life of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union military genius who won the Civil War, and subsequently the two-time President who championed the freedom of the former slave population of the South through his policy of Reconstruction. Grant emerges as a flawed individual who battled a liking for alcohol and who was overly naïve in his judgement on people, particularly those looking to use him for financial or political gain, but whose legacy to the US is immense, parallel to that of his political mentor Abraham Lincoln. This is a superb biography which has been extensively researched, yet which reads like a novel. Thoroughly recommended.

This biography of Grant is a weighty tome that demands an investment of time that few biographies normally require. I’m still unsure if it was worth it!This covers his entire life and the first half where it explores his childhood and his years as a civil war general were fascinating. You see why he was respected so much and discover the innovative methods he developed to fight and win the war for the north. The part of this book that covers his presidential years was extremely dry and where the author could recount an incident with more brevity, he often didn’t. It became ridiculous to read of events where it became almost like ‘he said this, then he said that, then he said this’, whereas an actual narrative account of the event would suffice and illustrate the point being explored. The last part which covers his life after the presidency was interesting as Grant travelled the world and became the first defacto foreign relations diplomat.You do get the feeling the author did a lot of research for this book and couldn’t bear to leave any of it out, but I feel it would have benefited from a more strict edit and being half the length. I have no problems with long books, as some of my other reviews show, but only when they genuinely require it and books as dry and unnecessarily long as this leave me a little frustrated as my time (like all of us) is precious. Saying this, I did find it a fascinating life story and parts of this book had me gripped and were written with real verve (mainly the aforementioned Civil war years). It was great to learn more about an American president who often slips through the cracks of historical biographies and if you enjoy reading about American history, politics or the civil war, then give this a go. Just be prepared for a big time commitment and to power through the more dry parts.

This book goes on for ever. Literally. Ad infinitum. It is. 1,000 long and Chernow cold have condensed it to 5 - 600 pages without losing historical accuracy.With so many pages the author risks getting bogged into detail and losing the bigger oicture throughout. And that is exactly what happens. Chernow dwells on Grant’s alleged problem with alcohol spending page after page on the reliability of witness statements and to the extent where you sit there and say “OK Ron! I get the picture. Conclude and move on”.The price of all this is that the section on the civil war becomes yet another missed opportunity to write a great story. Although the civil war is central to the book, it becomes almost only a side issue as opposed to focusing on the wider strategic picture. Why were Grant’s battles important? And what degrees of freedom did they give Lincoln and other generals?As far as alcoholism is concerned, it is an interesting question. Do I believe that Grant could have been a stark raving alcoholic and at the same time commanded very successfully a huge army of 200,000 men? Won major battles, where he commanded and led from the front? Become Lincoln’s most trusted soldier? And sat two terms as President of the United States? Common sense would dictate no.So, in conclusion: way too long; nowhere near Chernow’s finest book and you are left with the impression that he was paid per page rather than paid for quality.

Brilliant read really portraying the real U S Grant and showing his importance in American history. To think the scumbag Antifa mindless morons ripped his statue down in San Francisco shows how dumbed down the millennial generation is. Grants humanity to his black fellow Americans was heart rendering. Maybe take Keeping Up With the Kardashians off the TV and tell the story about Grant, Lincoln, Sherman and the others who did so much to end slavery !

Ron Chernow is already stablished as the biographer of the XIX century America. His books on Washington, Hamilton, Grant, Rockefeller and Morgan can be read as the great chronic of politics and finance of the nation in the making. Some of those books are slightly better than others, yet they form an admirable, already essential, opus, and this precise one, the life of Ulysses Grant, ranks high in this little great canon.General (later President) Grant is one of the great men of the XIX century America, or perhaps of recent history. The man was a celebrated soldier, an excellent writer, twice President of the USA and a figure made a model of perseverance, strong will and stoicism - one of the more recognizable recent authors of the said stoicism, Ryan Holiday, had Grant as one of his central examples in his celebrated (and multi-million seller) "The Obstacle is the Way". Ulysses Grant was also a good husband and doting father. And then an alcoholic and a poor (a very poor) business man, who in spite of his evident success, was always in the verge of bankruptcy.All the previous is in the book, in a tale that runs through the best part of the XIX century and which has as secondary characters President Lincoln and Queen Victoria, amongst others. The tale is well told, the ups and downs of the man well drawn and the story flows. The event that made Grant - the American Civil War - is in the book, but as a background, secondary to the General who won it. At the end, we know a lot of a fascinating character, and also much on a fascinating country, still looking for its place in the world. The book is deeply researched and well written, with the trade-mark, almost recognizable, magnificent sober prose of Mr Chernow, making its 900 plus pages to go quick.Only a small flaw, a moot. The book sides too much with its subject. The author obviously admires its main character (who doesn't), but he shows the admiration too much. After every mistake made by Grant comes not only the explanation, but the justification. It paints a too neat of a picture of an evidently flawed man. Making his flaws clearer wouldn't have made Grant worse, only more human.