Scan barcode
A review by murrderdith
Grant by Ron Chernow
5.0
It's reasonable, whenever you read a presidential biography, to compare the subject to the current president. There are, perhaps, similarities between US Grant and the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Both men came to the presidency without prior political experience (though Grant did briefly serve as Secretary of War during the Johnson administration after Stanton's ouster.) They both bristle at the restrictions of the office, and neither man could be considered a great orator (though Grant's style was considered more taciturn than discombobulating.) But they are, in fundamentals, entirely different.
Grant wasn't crass. He never seemed to have an outsized impression of his own abilities. He dedicated his life to public service. Having witnessed firsthand the ravages of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction-era attacks on African Americans in the South, he would have been horrified to see a resurgent Klan and a president who seems at times to ally himself with white nationalists anti-semites.
Chernow's depiction is far from a hagiography. He doesn't shy away from Grant's drinking problem, his anti-semitic and disastrous General Order no. 11 (which Grant seems to have taken great pains to rectify during his presidency and after) or the scandals that tarnished his administration (though he is careful to distance Grant from those personally.) He never misses an opportunity to remind the reader that Grant was too quick to trust men who had not earned it. That being said, Chernow makes no apology for attempting to further correct the record of Grant's life. He's always happy to undermine Lost Cause interpretations of Grant as a lucky butcher. Chernow is similarly corrective in his descriptions of Grant's valiant efforts on the part African Americans after the Civil War.
It's also telling of Grant's character that he was remembered fondly the likes of Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman but also former Confederates Mosby and Longstreet, who both came to respect and admire their former adversary.
I listened to this book, which spared me having to haul 1000+ page hardcover around for the last couple months. It's still an undertaking (at around 48 hours.) The audio version is worth it, if only for Mark Bramwell's interpretations of Mary Chesnut, Queen Victoria, and Mark Twain. His Lincoln isn't bad either.
Grant wasn't crass. He never seemed to have an outsized impression of his own abilities. He dedicated his life to public service. Having witnessed firsthand the ravages of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction-era attacks on African Americans in the South, he would have been horrified to see a resurgent Klan and a president who seems at times to ally himself with white nationalists anti-semites.
Chernow's depiction is far from a hagiography. He doesn't shy away from Grant's drinking problem, his anti-semitic and disastrous General Order no. 11 (which Grant seems to have taken great pains to rectify during his presidency and after) or the scandals that tarnished his administration (though he is careful to distance Grant from those personally.) He never misses an opportunity to remind the reader that Grant was too quick to trust men who had not earned it. That being said, Chernow makes no apology for attempting to further correct the record of Grant's life. He's always happy to undermine Lost Cause interpretations of Grant as a lucky butcher. Chernow is similarly corrective in his descriptions of Grant's valiant efforts on the part African Americans after the Civil War.
It's also telling of Grant's character that he was remembered fondly the likes of Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman but also former Confederates Mosby and Longstreet, who both came to respect and admire their former adversary.
I listened to this book, which spared me having to haul 1000+ page hardcover around for the last couple months. It's still an undertaking (at around 48 hours.) The audio version is worth it, if only for Mark Bramwell's interpretations of Mary Chesnut, Queen Victoria, and Mark Twain. His Lincoln isn't bad either.