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Penguin Press
October 2017
On Sale: October 10, 2017
1104 pages
ISBN: 159420487X
EAN: 9781594204876
Kindle: B06W2J89PV
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History | Non-Fiction Memoir
Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping
and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals
and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood.
All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an
inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union
general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come
close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful
biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of
the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with
dizzying speed and frequency. Before the Civil War, Grant was flailing. His business
ventures had ended dismally, and despite distinguished
service in the Mexican War he ended up resigning from the
army in disgrace amid recurring accusations of drunkenness.
But in war, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential,
soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at
the battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign, and
ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general
Robert E. Lee. Along the way, Grant endeared himself to
President Lincoln and became his most trusted general and
the strategic genius of the war effort. Grant’s military
fame translated into a two-term presidency, but one plagued
by corruption scandals involving his closest staff members. More important, he sought freedom and justice for black
Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the
admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him “the
vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race.”
After his presidency, he was again brought low by a dashing
young swindler on Wall Street, only to resuscitate his image
by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are
recognized as a masterpiece of the genre. With lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds
the threads that bind these disparate stories together,
shedding new light on the man whom Walt Whitman described as
“nothing heroic... and yet the greatest hero.” Chernow’s
probing portrait of Grant's lifelong struggle with
alcoholism transforms our understanding of the man at the
deepest level. This is America's greatest biographer,
bringing movingly to life one of our finest but most
underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography, Grant
is a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary
brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Grant's life,
explaining how this simple Midwesterner could at once be so
ordinary and so extraordinary.
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