Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant - Softcover

Ulysses S. Grant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306801728 ISBN 13: 9780306801723

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1982

Synopsis

Among the autobiographies of generals and statesmen, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant ranks with the greatest. Mark Twain called it ”the best of any general's since Caesar.” And few historians would disagree. Unquestionably, it is the finest literary achievement by any American president, the frankest, least pretentious, most nearly tragic account we have of the failings and triumphs of leadership.Written as Grant was dying of cancer, it tells the straightforward story of his boyhood in Ohio, graduation from West Point, and the grimy military campaigns in the West and Mexico that ended with his resignation in disgrace and a return to Galena where he ran the family store. Then began the rebellion that broke the Union and recast Grant's fortune: the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Appomattox, Five Forks, Sailor's Creek, Vicksburg and Lookout Mountain, the bloody Wilderness campaign, Sherman's ”March to the Sea,”. Grant the tactician, the victim of his friends, the alcoholic, the plain and tough professional soldier, the ideal commander all of these images are brightened in the work of Grant the writer as he assesses himself and the events that forged his character.

About this title

Review:

In 1862, a prominent Republican visited President Lincoln and called General Ulysses S. Grant an incompetent drunk who created unnecessary political problems. Lincoln, frustrated with all his generals but this one, famously replied: "I can't spare this man; he fights." Indeed, Lincoln had gone through a series of unheroic generals before settling on Grant to lead the Union's Army of the Potomac. Grant's success at marshaling the industrial might of the North eventually pounded the South into submission. This memoir, finished as its author was dying of throat cancer in 1885, is widely admired for its clear and straightforward prose. The volume was an enormously popular hit upon publication (by Mark Twain, no less), and today Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant ranks among the finest pieces of military autobiography ever written.

From the Publisher:

These are in stock and ready for immediate shipment if you use the DSI4 Marketplace shop. This is a Great gift for the upcoming holiday season. The paper used is library quality and this is not a mass market paperback set.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0306801728
• ISBN 13: 9780306801723
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 648
• Editor: E. B. Long