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Title: Grant by Jean Edward Smith ISBN: 0-684-84927-5 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 09 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.02 (42 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Read About a Fascinating Man
Comment: In my humble opinion, Smith's biography of a great general and somewhat successful president is interesting and well-written. Granted, I have not read other Grant biographies or consider myself a scholar. However, I believe Smith has produced a good read.
Some of the more interesting aspects of Grant's life covered include:
1. Early childhood growing up in Ohio and other areas.
2. Unspectacular career at West Point.
3. Notable service during the Mexican War.
4. Frustrations due to slow promotion in the army and frequent separation from his family (the author asserts the latter resulted in his drinking problem).
5. Resignation from the army and subsequent failures in civilian employment.
6. Notable Civil War career, including battle descriptions of: Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Appamattox.
7. His mixed record as president (success with civil rights for blacks and Indians, failure with several instances of corruption by those who took advantage of his trusting nature).
8. Herculean efforts to complete his memoirs just before he died and was able to provide financial security for his family.
I also found fascinating the political intrigue Grant had to deal with during his years as a Civil War general and as president. In most cases, Grant persevered while others fell.
I would have liked to have read more about his relationship with his wife and children since they apparently meant so much to him. For an area so vital to Grant's life, little is mentioned.
All in all, a recommended read!
Rating: 3
Summary: Good not great
Comment: I read this book in my ongoing project of reading a biography on every President. I found this to be a good, but not great biography. Of course, a lot of that could do with the fact that Grant's Presidency is not recognized as that outstanding.
I enjoyed the description of Grant's military exploits, but I found some of the detailed descriptions of Civil War battles to bog down a little bit in the telling. I have read military history in the past and would like to see more maps accompanying it. I felt the same way about these battlefield descriptions. Somewhere in the middle of the battle I always lose who is where and who is charging up what hill and who is backed up against a river. It can get confusing.
I did like the description of Grant's role in the war in Mexico. Probably because it wasn't as detailed.
As for the description of his Presidency, it seemed to be relatively incomplete. It was almost if nothing significant really happened during his eight years in the White House. Maybe that was the case??
One thing I really wanted more of was Grant's thoughts and feelings on Lincoln's assassination. The writer didn't spend a lot of time on it. I wish he would have because it really is one of the most important things to happen in the history of the country and it just seemed like it deserved more time.
This was a pretty good book, but I would say I plan to read something else on Grant to try and fill in some of the blanks.
After reading it though, I have a lot more respect for Grant and wish the moral compass by which he lived by could be transplanted into some of today's leaders.
Rating: 3
Summary: Adequate, But Hardly Definitive
Comment: It is a great mystery to me why there has yet to appear a truly satisfactory biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Here is someone who was probably the most famous and admired man of his time, he had an incredibly varied and interesting life, culminating in one of the most dramatic and well-publicized deaths ever recorded, and heaven knows, there is no lack of source material for historians to draw upon. So, why, over a century since his demise, is Grant much less understood and generally ill-treated by history than when he was alive? I can only surmise that he was too deep a character, and his life far too complicated, for our rather shallow modern biographers to truly do him justice. What Grant needs is a Hume or Froude to step in and rescue his memory.
Unfortunately, he fails to find one in Jean Smith. Smith does a relatively decent job of covering Grant's public career. He describes his war efforts well enough--at least to this non-military historian--and his section on Grant's shockingly underrated Presidency is a welcome bit of revisionism. It's easily the best part of the book.
Where he fails is in his treatment of Grant's civilian years--which was, to me, the most interesting part of his life. Smith delivers a casual, surface treatment of Grant's private life--even his last year, where he held off an impending death by sheer willpower in order to complete his memoirs and provide for his soon-to-be widow, is rushed through hurriedly, as though Smith had wearied of his project and wished to simply get it over with.
Further evidence that large parts of the book feel like a rush-job comes from the occasional word-for-word remarks "borrowed" from authors like Lloyd Lewis and William McFeely. Such plagiarized comments are jarring, and deepen the impression that Smith just did not put much mental effort into much of his work.
In short, the book is a useful, quite readable introductory volume for anyone who knows nothing about Grant and wishes to learn more, but little more. Pity.
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Title: LINCOLN by David Herbert Donald ISBN: 068482535X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 05 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: April 1865: The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik ISBN: 0060930888 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini ISBN: 0060937351 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Garfield: A Biography by Allan Peskin ISBN: 0873382102 Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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