Rating: 
Summary: The most approchable Grant in a generation
Review: For all its flaws (and they are there) this one seems to make the most sense of the wierd relationship Grant had with his world. Just because he lived life in the open, without pretense or real ambition, most people wish to revile him and any vision that shows what he probably was: a completely open patriot without pretenses of grandeur. Perret is to be congratuated for a fine job.By the way, people, secondary history books are intended to entertain as well as inform. This one does both, even if the latter is not the best.
Rating: 
Summary: Biography by American Military Historian Adds Perspective!
Review: Geoffrey Perret's previous work, "A Country Made By War," which is a general military history of the United States, gives him the background to put the military career of Grant in perspective. He worked closely with the editor of Grant's papers to acquire the background to write this biography. His short chapters don't go into great details on individual battles, but capture well the development of Grant's personality, generalship, and presidency. J.F.C. Fuller's "Grant and Lee" and "The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant" go into greater detail in analyzing the military strategy, strengths and weaknesses, of Grant's command both in the Western and Eastern theaters. But Perret's book is well worth reading. He captures the spirit of Grant well.
Rating:
Summary: Biography by American Military Historian Adds Perspective!
Review: Geoffrey Perret's previous work, "A Country Made By War," which is a general military history of the United States, gives him the background to put the military career of Grant in perspective. He worked closely with the editor of Grant's papers to acquire the background to write this biography. His short chapters don't go into great details on individual battles, but capture well the development of Grant's personality, generalship, and presidency. J.F.C. Fuller's "Grant and Lee" and "The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant" go into greater detail in analyzing the military strategy, strengths and weaknesses, of Grant's command both in the Western and Eastern theaters. But Perret's book is well worth reading. He captures the spirit of Grant well.
Rating:
Summary: Like Good Whiskey.....
Review: Incredible bravado that demands a response from humble me: "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." Right on! And there's no "experet" like Geoff Perret, but what readers want is a soundly-research biography devoid of humiliating gaffes, not this botched job. "Do you like a great story? Well this one is for you." Grant's life is a great story. Too bad Mr. Perret is unacquainted with the essential facts of his life. This isn't fiction. "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." Be prepared, however, to correct your understanding of all of these with sounder works. "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!" Or you can skip it altogether, right? Absolutely horrible on the Grant-Thomas relationship!
Rating: 
Summary: Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts!
Review: There are already several reviews of this book printed here, with which I agree heartily, so I'll keep my comments brief. Perret's "Ulysses S. Grant, Soldier and President," is the twelfth book on Grant that I've read (I can't seem to get enough of this topic). Perret's writing is crisp and intelligent. He doesn't drag out his thesis in long jumbled sentences, rather, he keeps his reader focused on the point he is trying to make on each phase of Grant's personal and professional life. He exposes flaws in previous Grant biographies by proving their lack of documented evidence and holding the authors to task for their shoddy scholarship. At the same time, he does not give the impression that he intends to "show up" other Grant biographers, he just sets the record straight. I recommend this biography to anyone who wants to understand America in the Nineteenth century. Ulysses S. Grant is the key: he saved the Union, he fought for the rights of the freedmen during Reconstruction, he was always honest-though he did make his share of mistakes - and when he erred, he accepted the responsibility for his mistakes. Grant was a devoted family man, was loyal to his friends and forgiving of his enemies. He was humble and appeared ordinary, yet he achieved amazing things. Perret's most insightful point in this work is his statement that Grant's religion was patiotism. I agree. No one ever loved this country more.
Rating:
Summary: A Fabulous Biography
Review: There are already several reviews of this book printed here, with which I agree heartily, so I'll keep my comments brief. Perret's "Ulysses S. Grant, Soldier and President," is the twelfth book on Grant that I've read (I can't seem to get enough of this topic). Perret's writing is crisp and intelligent. He doesn't drag out his thesis in long jumbled sentences, rather, he keeps his reader focused on the point he is trying to make on each phase of Grant's personal and professional life. He exposes flaws in previous Grant biographies by proving their lack of documented evidence and holding the authors to task for their shoddy scholarship. At the same time, he does not give the impression that he intends to "show up" other Grant biographers, he just sets the record straight. I recommend this biography to anyone who wants to understand America in the Nineteenth century. Ulysses S. Grant is the key: he saved the Union, he fought for the rights of the freedmen during Reconstruction, he was always honest-though he did make his share of mistakes - and when he erred, he accepted the responsibility for his mistakes. Grant was a devoted family man, was loyal to his friends and forgiving of his enemies. He was humble and appeared ordinary, yet he achieved amazing things. Perret's most insightful point in this work is his statement that Grant's religion was patiotism. I agree. No one ever loved this country more.
Rating:
Summary: Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts!
Review: This book is truly an astonishing piece of work. Considering its grotesque factual errors and bizarre misreadings of source material (more than I have ever seen in a single work of non-fiction,) the pompous writing style, the author's grating tendency to make childishly snide (and irrelevant) side comments, and--most bafflingly--the remarkable hatchet-job he does on Grant's wife Julia, I think I can state unhesitatingly that this is the most thoroughly unprofessional biography of anyone I have ever read. I find myself genuinely baffled that Perret evidently still has a career as a historian. As appalled as I am by the thought that readers who had no prior knowledge about Grant will be led to take some of this tripe seriously, I am even more stunned by reviewers who state unblushingly that Perret's allergy to accuracy does not matter, as long as he is pro-Grant and writes in what is, to them, an appealing writing style! There are few people who defend Grant more wholeheartedly than I do (hey, I even maintain he was a pretty good President,) but I believe that a bad defense of USG can, in the long run, be as damaging to his reputation as no defense at all. My advice to Grant neophytes? Read the man's own words, in his acclaimed memoirs and fascinating private letters, as well as first person accounts like "Campaigning With Grant," and give this silliness a wide berth. And those cracks of his about Julia REALLY set my teeth on edge.
Rating:
Summary: The worst Grant book of all
Review: This is a terrible book, full of mistakes of the most elemental types. The author hasn't got a clue about the real Ulysses S. Grant and it shows throughout this limping entry into the Grant field. This book is regarded as a fatuous joke among those who follow Grant's life. My advice is to avoid it like the plague.
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 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.
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