Rating: 
Summary: The Inner Man
Review: This is an excellent work and so easy to read and the flow is wonderful. The image we have been led to believe is more accurate here and clear. I can see that famous people endure the attacks but can survive. This is a new view of the US Grant that I have read about and the work is balanced and applies to the current war stategy that we know in the WWII era. Loved the book and so well written I can't wait to get the book on Eisenhower who must have learned a lot from Grant.
Rating:
Summary: one of the very best biographies that I have ever rea
Review: This is one of the very best biographies that I have ever read. In addition to being written in a lyrical prose, it offers a much needed corrective to the withering, and unfair, historical portrait that Grant has been stuck with. Let's face it, here's what most of us know about Grant: he didn't do much at West Point, was a failure in business, drank his way through the Civil War, winning only because he was willing to kill his own soldiers, oversaw one of the most corrupt Presidential administrations ever and died. The most important previous biography, William McFeely's Pulitzer Prizewinning Grant (1981), took a sufficiently negative view of Grant that it did little to change, and even reinforced, these received truths. Like almost all misrepresentations in History, there are kernels of truth in the portrait, but it leaves out much and Perret is able to convincingly challenge much of the rest of it. Missing from that portrayal are Grant's fundamental decency as a man, his exemplary service in the Mexican War, his genuine strategic insight and at times nearly prophetic foresight (as when he offered to have a Cabinet member put his personal wealth in a blind trust), and his authorship of perhaps the best book written by a U. S. President (only Teddy Roosevelt can really challenge for the title), one of the great books of the 19th Century, his Personal Memoirs. Perret gives each of these the full treatment that it deserves and Grant's exceptional character and his control over his emotions and ego run like a leit motif throughout the book. Perhaps more importantly, Perret takes on each of the negative characterizations that has accrued to Grant's reputation over the years. Grant did perform indifferently at the Military Academy, but Perret points out that simply attending college (and West Point was one of the best in the world) put Grant in the educated elite of his time. Moreover, besides being an exceptional and much envied horseman, Grant performed well in classes that interested him and went on to study military history and tactics for the rest of his life, developing a really fine analytical mind on military matters. Grant did not do well in business, but he was scrupulously honest and as he first demonstrated as a quartermaster in the Mexican War, he was capable, even gifted, at managing materiel. Later when he was running the entire Union Army, he did so professionally and even brilliantly. It's hard to see how he can be faulted so heavily for bad luck running small businesses and given so little credit for managing what must have been one of the largest enterprises in human history up until that time. Grant did drink, but there is no evidence that it ever effected the performance of his duties. Also, he drank only when he was lonely. Any time that his wife was in the vicinity he was a virtual teetotaler. As to the manner in which he won the war, it seems increasingly possible to me that there were only three men on Earth who genuinely understood the dynamics of the Civil war as it was unfolding: Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Winfield Scott, as the War began, enunciated his Anaconda Plan, calling for the North to exploit its superior numbers and for Union troops to close off the Mississippi and then start squeezing the South like a rodent in the grip of a snake. But Scott was an old man by that time and was not capable of managing the effort. Lincoln knew that Scott was correct in his strategic vision, but it fell to him to keep the political plates spinning and to find the generals to carry out the plan. Destiny handed him the ideal instrument in U.S. Grant who grasped the vision and had the iron will to carry it out. If Grant was sometimes willing to suffer losses as the price of engaging the foe, he never wasted lives intentionally and was shattered by the occasions where men under his command did die futilely. Finally, on the issue of the corruption in his administration, Perret makes one point that I found profound. Grant's administration was not any more corrupt than the ones that succeeded it, but the fact that it was more corrupt than the ones that preceded it has caused it to be seen as extraordinarily scandalous. And it was more scandal ridden, not because of anything intrinsic to Grant, but because one of the consequences of the War was that the Federal government had grown tremendously in size and there was simply more there to steal. Similarly, the explosive growth in the size of government in the past sixty years has been accompanied by an unending series of scandals regardless of administration. In the end, whether or not Perret succeeds in winning all of these battles to reclaim Grant's reputation, he definitely does get the reader to take a step back and look at Grant with a fresh perspective. The Grant who emerges from this portrait is a genuine American hero and one of the most honorable and decent men ever to become President. This is an outstanding book and a valuable reassessment of a seemingly ordinary man who called upon his own extraordinary will to achieve great things and shape American history. Most highly recommended. GRADE: A+
Rating:
Summary: one of the very best biographies that I have ever rea
Review: This is one of the very best biographies that I have ever read. In addition to being written in a lyrical prose, it offers a much needed corrective to the withering, and unfair, historical portrait that Grant has been stuck with. Let's face it, here's what most of us know about Grant: he didn't do much at West Point, was a failure in business, drank his way through the Civil War, winning only because he was willing to kill his own soldiers, oversaw one of the most corrupt Presidential administrations ever and died. The most important previous biography, William McFeely's Pulitzer Prizewinning Grant (1981), took a sufficiently negative view of Grant that it did little to change, and even reinforced, these received truths. Like almost all misrepresentations in History, there are kernels of truth in the portrait, but it leaves out much and Perret is able to convincingly challenge much of the rest of it. Missing from that portrayal are Grant's fundamental decency as a man, his exemplary service in the Mexican War, his genuine strategic insight and at times nearly prophetic foresight (as when he offered to have a Cabinet member put his personal wealth in a blind trust), and his authorship of perhaps the best book written by a U. S. President (only Teddy Roosevelt can really challenge for the title), one of the great books of the 19th Century, his Personal Memoirs. Perret gives each of these the full treatment that it deserves and Grant's exceptional character and his control over his emotions and ego run like a leit motif throughout the book. Perhaps more importantly, Perret takes on each of the negative characterizations that has accrued to Grant's reputation over the years. Grant did perform indifferently at the Military Academy, but Perret points out that simply attending college (and West Point was one of the best in the world) put Grant in the educated elite of his time. Moreover, besides being an exceptional and much envied horseman, Grant performed well in classes that interested him and went on to study military history and tactics for the rest of his life, developing a really fine analytical mind on military matters. Grant did not do well in business, but he was scrupulously honest and as he first demonstrated as a quartermaster in the Mexican War, he was capable, even gifted, at managing materiel. Later when he was running the entire Union Army, he did so professionally and even brilliantly. It's hard to see how he can be faulted so heavily for bad luck running small businesses and given so little credit for managing what must have been one of the largest enterprises in human history up until that time. Grant did drink, but there is no evidence that it ever effected the performance of his duties. Also, he drank only when he was lonely. Any time that his wife was in the vicinity he was a virtual teetotaler. As to the manner in which he won the war, it seems increasingly possible to me that there were only three men on Earth who genuinely understood the dynamics of the Civil war as it was unfolding: Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Winfield Scott, as the War began, enunciated his Anaconda Plan, calling for the North to exploit its superior numbers and for Union troops to close off the Mississippi and then start squeezing the South like a rodent in the grip of a snake. But Scott was an old man by that time and was not capable of managing the effort. Lincoln knew that Scott was correct in his strategic vision, but it fell to him to keep the political plates spinning and to find the generals to carry out the plan. Destiny handed him the ideal instrument in U.S. Grant who grasped the vision and had the iron will to carry it out. If Grant was sometimes willing to suffer losses as the price of engaging the foe, he never wasted lives intentionally and was shattered by the occasions where men under his command did die futilely. Finally, on the issue of the corruption in his administration, Perret makes one point that I found profound. Grant's administration was not any more corrupt than the ones that succeeded it, but the fact that it was more corrupt than the ones that preceded it has caused it to be seen as extraordinarily scandalous. And it was more scandal ridden, not because of anything intrinsic to Grant, but because one of the consequences of the War was that the Federal government had grown tremendously in size and there was simply more there to steal. Similarly, the explosive growth in the size of government in the past sixty years has been accompanied by an unending series of scandals regardless of administration. In the end, whether or not Perret succeeds in winning all of these battles to reclaim Grant's reputation, he definitely does get the reader to take a step back and look at Grant with a fresh perspective. The Grant who emerges from this portrait is a genuine American hero and one of the most honorable and decent men ever to become President. This is an outstanding book and a valuable reassessment of a seemingly ordinary man who called upon his own extraordinary will to achieve great things and shape American history. Most highly recommended. GRADE: A+
Rating: 
Summary: A Readable, Fast-paced, Thought provoking Biography.
Review: This is perhaps not the best Grant biography ever written. But it is well-written, well researched and thought provoking which is what good history should be. Mr. Perret effectively refutes the conventional wisdom that General Grant was just an earthy street fighter with no strategic vision.This book shows us that Grant was in fact one of the truly great military strategists of all time. Mr. Perret is a gifted writer who gives us some vivid,and often funny character sketches of Grant's contemporaries.But some of these sketches are really unfair, In particular his blaming of Winfield Scott Hancock for the crippling siege of Petersburg. The Author's most important contribution to our understanding of Grant is his analysis of Grant's much maligned Presidency.Historians almost universally characterize Grant as being among our worst Presidents,Right down there with James Buchanan and Warren Harding.But Perret reminds us this estimate is almost entirely the result of the fact that Grant headed a corrupt administration. Perret points out that there is no evidence that Grant himself did anything illegal or even unethical.And that other Presidents, most notably Harry S. Truman headed corrupt administrations,yet this appears not to have damaged their historical reputations.Mr. Perret makes a strong case that President Grant had some significant accomplishments which History has largely overlooked. For instance, By the time Grant left office he had largely smashed the Ku Klux Klan in the south, And had his sucessors followed his example the History of our race relations would have been very different.Also Grant was the first President to make a genuine attempt to treat the Indians with a measure of fairness. U.S. Grant is to me one of the most surpassingly interesting figures in all of History.In the last thirty years I have read every biography of him that I could lay my hands on and this is one of the most satisfying.I highly reccomend it.
Rating:
Summary: One of history's most enigmatic personalities.
Review: This life of Grant is written with grace and verve and it sweeps the reader along from the first page - indeed it is hard to see how any single volume biography could accomplish more. At the end of it however - as at the end of all writings on and by Grant - one is still left bemused by the contradictions in this ostensibly simple, but in reality enormously complex personality. Grant did no less than win the most complex war yet fought by humanity, managing (a word that immediately comes to mind in regard to Grant) in the process unprecedented numbers of troops and mastering the deployment of new weapons systems - such as the river gun-boats - that emerged during the conflict. His tactical abilities grew to cope with exponentially rising sizes of forces and his strategic thinking was distinguished by clarity, courage and ruthlessness. His leadership was such as to carry both officers and men with him in acceptance of brutal solutions to terrible dilemmas. His embodiment of the Churchillian ideal of magnanimity in victory laid the foundations for the re-United States. Few men have carried such a heavy burden with such decency and generosity: power did not make him arrogant nor success dehumanise him. The Mexican War had already given indications of these qualities and yet after it Grant lapsed into virtual failure and demoralisation. The section of this book dealing with the years immediately preceding the Civil War are painful to read, offering an almost too-close insight into the near despair of a decent man unable - perhaps too proud - to find a role in a thrusting, money-grubbing and cut-throat civilian society. Only five years separate the almost penniless failure's humiliating appeal to his father for a job in the family leather store from the surrender-negotiation at Appomattox Court House, and three years more saw him President, albeit reluctantly. In the story of the White House years - and beyond - there is a strong impression of a man bored, part amused, part disgusted, by the pettiness of the scene around him. The set-backs and scandals of his administrations, none of which involved any hint of personal advantage to himself, seem ultimately to stem from an inner abdication. One gains a strong sense of a man who has confronted the absolute and who afterwards finds the relative unworthy of his energies or passions. Throughout this period he nevertheless continued to evoke huge loyalty and a third Presidential term could have been his in 1880, after Hayes' tenure, had he chosen to commit himself fully - but once again there is that impression of a man bored and distant. Only in the last terrible months of his life, enduring financial ruin and hideous pain, does Grant again rise to heroic status, not only producing his memoirs in extremis, but doing so with an elegance that make them an American classic. Nothing is simple in this story - not Grant's emotional and family life, his struggle with alcohol, his politics, his innate integrity - and least of all the origins of his military genius. This complex, absorbing and inspiring story is well told by Mr.Perret, who finds the right balance between all major elements. The events, excitingly told though they may be, are not allowed to dominate, and Grant's personality is at all times at the centre of the narrative. Quotations are well chosen to enliven the text and there are dozens of illuminating vignettes to add colour and immediacy. The Civil War years are obviously at the heart of the book and Mr.Perret finds the correct balance between overview and detail in handling Grant's vast campaigns. A minor complaint must however be the shortage and low quality of the maps, essential for a work even at this level. A final point is that readers who come to Grant through this volume will delight in "The Armies of U.S.Grant" by James R.Arnold, which traces Grant's growth as a commander in considerable detail and which is also colourful, readable, and enlivened by memorable quotes from Grant and his contemporaries.
Rating: 
Summary: Fatuous Beyond Belief!
Review: Truly illiterate and truly fatuous. I am 55 years old and have a master's in journalism. I am a professional copy editor. When I read this book I became so frustrated I came close several times to throwing it away. This book had to have been published without an editor. About every third sentence in the entire text is not a sentence with a subject and verb -- instead what you get is a clause, dangling by itself, with a period at the end. Also, the author must have sat down before he wrote this manuscript and compiled a list of every obscure word he could find in the dictionary -- -- and made sure he used every last one. If I knew a way to ask for my money back I certainly would do so. This book is a nightmare
Rating: 
Summary: The worst-researched Grant biography ever written
Review: Without a doubt this is the most poorly-researched historical biography I have ever read. It's amusing that other reviewers here dismiss the criticism that the book is laden with errors and have a "don't care" attitude about it. Why would anyone want to read a book that has hundreds of factual mistakes? Curious indeed. Perret specializes in breezy and fairly incompetent treatments of historical personalities. He moves from icon to icon, skimming the surface, engaging in haphazard research and producing pop biographies which are always compromised by egregious errors. He's written books on Ike, MacArthur and his new study will examine JFK. The old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none" immediately comes to mind. There is never anything new in his books and one can always count the mistakes on nearly every page. Perret's limitations with Grant are obvious to anyone with even a peripheral interest in the subject. Others have listed and detailed the mistakes, but they cripple the book and ultimately make it something of a joke. Dates, personalities, people and battles are constantly being mangled, mixed up and treated incompetently. Perret's analysis of Grant's complex personality is something out of "17 magazine," it's so wide of the mark it's ludicrous. None of the major players in Grant's life are profiled correctly. His take on Grant's wife, Julia is incorrect and mistake-ridden. Similarly, his profiles of Sherman, Rawlins and Lincoln are also facile and obtuse. His writing style is mid-Victorian and quirky. There are some passages that are rather moving and beautifully written, but then a misstatement of fact is thrown in to ruin the mood. For anyone with an interest in Grant or the civil war, this is a primary book to avoid. It's the nadir of scholarship, devoid of any revelations about Grant as a man or military entity. It is also crippled with mistakes of the most rudimentary nature. Grant deserved much better than this treatment.
Rating:
Summary: The worst-researched Grant biography ever written
Review: Without a doubt this is the most poorly-researched historical biography I have ever read. It's amusing that other reviewers here dismiss the criticism that the book is laden with errors and have a "don't care" attitude about it. Why would anyone want to read a book that has hundreds of factual mistakes? Curious indeed. Perret specializes in breezy and fairly incompetent treatments of historical personalities. He moves from icon to icon, skimming the surface, engaging in haphazard research and producing pop biographies which are always compromised by egregious errors. He's written books on Ike, MacArthur and his new study will examine JFK. The old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none" immediately comes to mind. There is never anything new in his books and one can always count the mistakes on nearly every page. Perret's limitations with Grant are obvious to anyone with even a peripheral interest in the subject. Others have listed and detailed the mistakes, but they cripple the book and ultimately make it something of a joke. Dates, personalities, people and battles are constantly being mangled, mixed up and treated incompetently. Perret's analysis of Grant's complex personality is something out of "17 magazine," it's so wide of the mark it's ludicrous. None of the major players in Grant's life are profiled correctly. His take on Grant's wife, Julia is incorrect and mistake-ridden. Similarly, his profiles of Sherman, Rawlins and Lincoln are also facile and obtuse. His writing style is mid-Victorian and quirky. There are some passages that are rather moving and beautifully written, but then a misstatement of fact is thrown in to ruin the mood. For anyone with an interest in Grant or the civil war, this is a primary book to avoid. It's the nadir of scholarship, devoid of any revelations about Grant as a man or military entity. It is also crippled with mistakes of the most rudimentary nature. Grant deserved much better than this treatment.
Rating:
Summary: Relax! It's Not That Bad!
Review: You know, many people love to read about History, but we all can't be such incredible experets like our fellow critics here at Amazon. Do you like a great story? Well this one is for you. You don't have to be "Mr. Historian" to enjoy it, and you're not lost in the sometimes tedious and yawn-prevoking details history can provide. This is about an intriging real-life character named Ulysses Grant. What an incredible adventure through the 1800's his life was. The book flows and give you an idea of the type of person Grant was and the time in America he grew up in. The author is certainly a fan of Grant, but does point out all his shortcomings. Bottom line, if you're starting to get to know the Civil War, Mexican War, Lincoln and that time period in History, then you'll enjoy seeing some of it through the eyes of Ulysses Grant. Read the book, you'll like it. I've read many Civil War books and biographies and I did. You can always go back later after you've read the other 45 Grant books and say how much you hated it!
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