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American Ulysses : a life of Ulysses S. Grant

Call Number

  • 921 G763W (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Random House, [2016]

Physical Description

xxvii, 826 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Summary

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. In his time, Grant was routinely grouped with Washington and Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield-commander-turned-commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the 20th century. Here, Lincoln biographer Ronald C. White argues that we need to revise our estimates of him once more in the 21st. After seven years of research with primary documents--some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars--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 historical 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.

Contents

  • Part I: Formation, 1630-1848. "My family is American" ; "My Ulysses" ; West Point ; "Dear Julia" ; "By treaty or the sword" ; "Army of invasion"
  • Part II: Trial, 1848-1861. Panama ; "Forsaken" ; "Hardscrabble" ; Galena
  • Part III: Transformation, 1861-1865. "I am in to do all I can" ; Belmont ; "Unconditional surrender" ; Shiloh ; William Tecumseh Sherman ; "More than forty Richmonds" ; Vicksburg ; Chattanooga ; "Washington's legitimate successor" ; "Battle of the Wilderness" ; Robert E. Lee ; Petersburg ; Appomattox
  • Part IV: Reconstruction, 1865-1868. "I will keep my word" ; "More & more radical" ; "Let us have peace"
  • Part V: President, 1869-1877. "Gold panic" ; "A radical change in Indian policy" ; "Foreign relations" ; Ku Klux Klan ; "The Gilded Age" ; "Malfeasance!" ; Centennial crisis
  • Part VI: World citizen, 1879-1885. American ambassador abroad ; Grant & Ward ; Final campaign.

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