Grant [Audio CD]

Max Byrd (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Recorded Books (2001)
• ISBN-10: 0788798855
• ISBN-13: 978-0788798856
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,679,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Book with a Strange Twist, June 15, 2001

By 

Robert Rosen (Lakeland, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grant: A Novel (Hardcover)

A surprising and fascinating book. Author Max Byrd follows the same basic structure as in his previous historical novels Jefferson and Jackson: youngish writer with one foot in Europe and the other in America tries to penetrate the essential mystery of the title character by researching the collected and conflicting observations of well-placed contemporaries. In Grant's case of course, the essential mystery is how Sam Grant, an alcoholic and utter failure approaching 40 years of age, could become U. S. Grant, the man who took command of the oft-beaten Union Army and saved his country, becoming in the process a future two-term president and "the most famous man in the world". Our protagonist, the fictional writer Nicholas Trist, was maimed in the war under Grant's command and thus has every reason to hate his former commander. As he works through his feelings about Grant and more details of various parts of Grant's life are revealed, we draw our own conclusions as well. The events of the novel take place after Grant's military and presidential careers are concluded and concern his attempt to obtain a third term and the well-known (and here well-told) efforts of the bankrupt and dying Grant to complete his memoirs in order to provide for his family. As expected in a book of this nature various real-life personages appear throughout (e.g. Mark Twain, William Tecumseh Sherman). Unexpectedly, one of these characters emerges as the subject of the novel just as much as Grant is. In real-life, famed 19th-century historian Henry Adams expressed his contemptuous dismissal of Grant's abilities and so Adams' prominent role in the book is no surprise, especially given his irresistibly (for a writer) vexatious personality . Where the novel takes its strange turn is the role Adams' wife Marion Hooper Adams (or his"doomed wife Clover" as the jacket blurb would have it) plays. Though hating her husband, Trist becomes friends with the witty, talented, unattractive, and unappreciated Clover and it is their conversations which become the most moving part of the book. I believe the author came to find Mrs. Adams' sad story even more interesting than Grant's and so powerful is Byrd's writing in these passages that I did as well. The book gains strength as we watch and she watches her own life slowly unravel. The most unusual thing of all is that her story and Grant's story are for the most part unconnected and the Trist character in effect shuttles back and forth between Grant's and Clover's lives. Since the novel is called Grant I was very curious to see how Byrd would in the end link the two stories. He does so masterfully but almost imperceptibly, in one seemingly off-hand comment Clover makes near the end of the book, contrasting Grant's actions in his final days to an act of her husband who was motivated by something quite different. I most strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone who enjoyed Byrd's previous books. I hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a historical novel in a military vein such as Michael and Jeffrey Shaara's Civil War novels. The book contains no battle reconstructions and Grant's strategic and tactical decisions are only discussed cursorily in the larger context of his character. Anyone who likes Gore Vidal's historical novels should like this book and I suspect Byrd is very familiar with those novels as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Novel Centered on the Last Five Years of Grant's Life, August 21, 2001

By 

Howard L. Dixon (Hopewell, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grant: A Novel (Paperback)

A historical fiction about Grant beginning in the fall of 1879 and ending with his death in 1885. It begins when the Country and specifically the Republican party is looking for a Presidential candidate. Grant is not actively campaigned for the nomination which, if elected, would make him President for a third term. The author, Max Byrd, uses an interesting technique of describing Grant's persona by telling stories, some well known and some not, about people who touched his life. Some of the people are friends and some frankly, are enemies. Byrd uses a fictitious newspaper reporter as the forcing function to tie the many stories together into an enjoyable and informative novel. Somewhat distracting for me was his technique of hyphenation--that carry substantial and granted informative amplification but in some cases goes on for several lines--to make his point. I enjoyed very much the detailed pictures that Byrd paints of the life and times of Washington D.C. The Republican convention was held in Chicago in 1880. Byrd does a nice job of describing the activities of that gathering where Grant had over 300 votes, but insufficient for nomination. Garfield was continuing to advocate John Sherman and then on the thirty-sixth vote the convention rolled-over and nominated Garfield himself. While the words, or course, are Byrd's creation, most of the characters are real. I found it interesting to take the book and walk around the area near Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and see the houses where Grant and the other characters came and went. Many interesting facts...for example, I was surprised to learn that Mark Twain convinced Grant to let the publisher that he owned publish the Memoirs of Grant. Twain paid him in advance because Grant's investment partner, Ward, had embezzled all their money. Byrd also has written similar fictionalized novels about Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. I plan to read both of those as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rembrandt with a pen, June 18, 2001

By 

desefinado "desefinado" (Centennial, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grant: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is a terrific evocation of an era, largely ignored in American history. By painting the shadows around Grant, I thought Byrd gave us "The Gilded Age" replete with the co-author (Twain) himself. Byrd has a rare gift for historical portraiture and wonderful storytelling. For those looking for more biographical facts on Grants life, see Jean Smith's excellent one volume biography.