Ulysses S. Grant is considered one of the great commanders in history and one of the worst US presidents. These two volumes offer the opportunity for a reassessment of that verdict. Grant emerges from them with his career as a soldier untarnished and with posterity’s verdict on his presidency revised. Grant appears as an admirable but all too human being, a truly great man on a par with Lincoln.
Ron Chernow, acclaimed biographer of Alexander Hamilton, gives us an unvarnished Grant in all his rough-hewn glory. A mid-westerner, Grant went to West Point to please his overbearing father. Though a brilliant horseman, he displayed no particular military ability or enthusiasm and after service in the Mexican War left the army under a cloud because of his drinking.
