Customer Reviews

The Generals: Ulysses S. Grant & Robert E. Lee

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a bit of a history buff, but would never have read this book without the prompting of a friend whom I respect. I struggled to get throught the first 50 pages, but after that I was hooked. Not only do I understand Grant and Lee better, but I feel I understand the USA better. A great story and a window on our nation. Recommended for anyone with the patience and time to peel back the layers of our past.

Let's make reference to the review printed below, which slams this book and claims it is baseless nonsense. Actually this book is readable, generally accurate and can introduce Grant and Lee to the broad range of people who know nothing about either of them. Is this historical biography of the highest realm? Hardly, but it lays no claim to that mantle. Instead, it's an entertaining book which does not slam Julia Grant, USG's wife, in the slightest. In fact, the book extols her support of her husband and focuses a great deal of attention on Grant's famously happy marriage. The sections on Lee are inferior to the chapters on Grant, but adequate. The format is rather crippling, as the authors seesaw between the two titans. One wonders why they didn't concentrate their forces on one instead of two?

Finally, the website mentioned by the previous reviewer is mine. As for the "completely fictional" notion that Julia suspected USG of being enamored of other women while on the West Coast, the reviewer needs to consult some other works on Grant before making this absurd claim. Read Grant's letters from the period before attacking the Andersons for presenting facts. Did Grant cheat while separated from his wife? Never. Did she worry about it? You betcha, and that's what this book presents. Case closed.

This book takes you through the lives of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Often, it acts like a timeline, paralleling the two lives at a particular date and recreating the events that were occurring to each at that time. Many of the personal letters from both Grant and Lee are used to tell the story of their lives. These letters are surrounded with superb insights of the day and brings with it the `feeling' of 1800's America. It is interesting to see how vastly different these two men were only to be thrust together at such a difficult time in our nations history. I strongly recommend The Generals to anyone interested in the Civil War or American History in general.

I did not want to put this book down and I really liked the way the authors did a section on Grant then on Lee and would switch back and forth. It seemed like I was reading an adventure novel in that sense with the Civil War as the adventure and tragedy. It really presented the human sides of Grant and Lee and made them more real to the reader.

I'm surprised this book doesn't get more press. I found it very informative regarding Grant's and Lee's personal and professional lives, but I also learned a lot about 1800's American culture as well...and I'm hardly a novice when it comes to the Civil War-era. Seeing as one Anderson is a college professor and the other is a journalist, "The Generals" is immaculately written, an all-too-often rarity concerning history books nowadays. The fact that the book is such a smooth read puts it ahead of the other Grant/Lee bios out. The Andersons' are economical writers, communicating in a few hundred pages what other long-winded folks take volumes to say. As far as the mildly negative Library Journal review goes, I wonder if that has anything to do with the Andersons' refusal to pull punches when speaking of the frailties of both Grant and Lee. These long since dead men are idealized to such an extent today that it's hard to get a feel for the people they really were. After reading "The Generals," I feel that I know both Ulysses Grant and Robert Lee, triumphs failures and draws, as well as I'm ever going to. If you're tired of reading the same old stories about Honorable Lee or Stubborn Grant, and want to get a deeper understanding of two of the most important men in American Civil War, give "The Generals" a shot. Happy reading!

There is no other way of putting it: I found this book perfectly appalling. I had thought that Geoffrey Perret's biography of Grant was the last word in historical sloppiness, but the Andersons have managed to wrest that dubious prize from his fingers. I am not a Lee expert, so I cannot say how accurate that section of this book is, but their chapters dealing with Grant are a joke. (And why is it that both the Andersons and Perret felt the need to include snide attacks on Grant's wife, Julia? Although the woman was undoubtedly no beauty, she was, by all accounts, a perfectly delightful person who was a warm, loving, and immensely supportive spouse to her oft-troubled husband. When did it become popular among third-rate historians to slander her?)

This book is so ludicrously inaccurate and fanciful that I would be amused if it were not for the fact that many unwitting readers are obviously led to unquestioningly accept this mishmash. Even a certain web site devoted to Grant has, I noticed, adopted a couple of this book's weirder claims (such as the bizarre, and completely fictional, idea that Julia accused Grant of adultery during the two years he spent on the West Coast,) and presented it as fact. It is frightening how much damage an inaccurate biography can do to the historical record.

Avoid this book at all costs!