NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the author of A. Lincoln, a major
new biography of one of America's greatest generals--and most
misunderstood presidents
Finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Military History Book Prize
In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American
Leaders." But the battlefield commander-turned-commander-in-chief fell
out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C.
White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in
the twenty-first.
Based on seven years of research with primary documents--some of them
never examined by previous Grant scholars--this is destined to become
the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally
skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to
be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader--a willing
delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his
fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the
historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential
partner.
Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of
equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the
White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to
battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the
government's policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first
ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation
for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs.
Published by Mark Twain, it is widely considered to be the greatest
autobiography by an American leader, but its place in Grant's life story
has never been fully explored--until now.
One of those rare books that successfully recast our impression of an
iconic historical figure, American Ulysses gives us a finely honed,
three-dimensional portrait of Grant the man--husband, father, leader,
writer--that should set the standard by which all future biographies of
him will be measured.
