Grant Speaks [Hardcover]

Everett M. Ehrlich (Author), Ev Ehrlich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2000

Whether putting Generals Burnside, Hooker, and Robert E. Lee in their place, or listening to foul-mouthed General Sherman, Hiram Ulysses S. 'Useless' Grant offers an amusingly warped perspective on the Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ehrlich's "real" (read, mock) life of Ulysses S. Grant, cast in the form of the protagonist's lost memoirs, is a cheeky lark. First of all, Grant is an impostor: his real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. The man who originally bore the name Ulysses S. Grant was the fatuous son of the mayor of Georgetown, Ohio, where both Grants grew up. Ulysses is destined for West Point, but a freak carriage accident kills his parents and robs him of his memory. Hiram's father, Jesse Root Grant, swiftly switches the boys' papers. While the real Ulysses wanders off, Hiram becomes the historical figure. At West Point, the striking rigidity and plain imbecility of Northern military thinking are prefigured in Grant's clash with the professor of military science, Henry Halleck, a pedant obsessed with supply lines. More promisingly, Grant meets another cadet, William Tecumseh Sherman, who becomes his best friend. After graduation, Grant serves as a quartermaster in the Mexican War. On the trail, he ingests peyote and has a spirit vision that predicts Ulysses Grant will be a great leaderAbut which Grant is the vision signaling? Our hero marries Julia, the daughter of a shiftless and conceited Southern farmer, resigns from the army and becomes a civilian failure, but the Civil War rescues him. Ehrlich's accounts of Grant's battles mix the burlesque with the thrilling. Sherman is a cussing lunatic, and most of the Northern generals are timeservers. Ehrlich's broad, cartoonish style is least successful when he portrays Lincoln as a dumb yokel and his wife as a nymphomaniac. Still, the best scenes in the book, like the description of the Battle of Shiloh, retain some of the power of reality. Grant wins the war, of course, and in Ehrlich's telling becomes a weak president and the tool of the Vanderbilts. Ehrlich's alternate Grant emerges from the uneven humor of the book as a skeptical, humane and ultimately sympathetic figure. Agent, David Chalfant of IMG Literary Agency. Major ad/promo. (June) FYI: Another fictional portrait of Grant, That Fateful Lightning, by Richard Parry, is due out from Ballantine in June (Forecasts, May 1).
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ulysses S. Grant, an undistinguished president who owed his office to a nation grateful for the long-awaited victory in the Civil War, is a historical novelist's dream subject. Living during a tumultuous time and marked by both honor and humiliation, he projected an ambiguous persona. Ehrlich takes this paradoxical man for a wild ride through history. Casting Grant as the evil twin of the real Ulysses S. Grant, an upright neighbor whose identity he stole, Ehrlich hits all the factual highlights, and his inventions have a satirical, gut-busting effect. Like his earlier Big Government (LJ 9/15/98), the new novel humorously dissects the nature of political power and its odd coincidences. In contrast, Byrd's book, though slower to excite the reader, is a serious exploration of the life and times of Grant. Its strong suit is the description of key battles and postwar events through the eyes of a one-armed veteran of the war. For Byrd, the period is a vast canvas on which he limns not only the central figure of Grant but also the lives affected by his habitual fecklessness, wartime hardness, and peacetime obtuseness. Of the two books, Ehrlich's book is a winner for larger fiction collections, while military fiction collections will be enhanced by the Byrd title. [Grant is also portrayed in Richard Parry's That Fateful Lightning: A Novel of Ulysses S. Grant (LJ 5/1/00). DEd.]DBarbara Conaty, Library of Congres.
-DBarbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 403 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446523879
• ISBN-13: 978-0446523875
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,189,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a moral tale, June 14, 2000

By 

maurie fox-warren (cambridge, mass) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grant Speaks (Hardcover)

This is a graceful and beautifully written book which revolves around a wonderful double conceit. First, that U.S. Grant stole the identity of a local namesake and took his place at West Point and second, that Grant had a mystical vision which promised that Grant (but which Grant?) would lead vast armies of men in the cause of human redemption. The power of the tale is that Grant can never know if he or the man whose identity he stole is the subject of the vision. Before the Civil War, Grant a failed peacetime soldier and businessman is sure that he is simply an impostor. As the great general who leads the Union Armies in the cause of human freedom, he is convinced that he really is the promised redeemer. As a sick and broken businessman after his term as president, he again faces his life as if he were a failure. Ehrlich's Grant teaches us we can never fully know the impact of our lives in the moment and that the decisions we make cannot simply be justified on the basis of a vision or divine command. We are responsible as moral actors for our acts whose results we can never fully anticipate.

This is certainly not a perfect book. General Sherman's addiction to the "f" word is jarring and anachronistic. The final section falls a bit flat. But these shortcomings don't prevent Grant Speaks from being a moving and entertaining novel

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars About the worst book I have read, July 5, 2000

By 

Jesse Root Grant (Georgetown, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grant Speaks (Hardcover)

So far I agree with all the negative reviews of this book, but no one has mentioned the most stupid part. How about when Mary Lincoln lunges for Grant's crotch and gyrates against him? Poor Abe, poor Grant.

I am not an expert on Grant, but even I know from reading here and there that the man was loyal as the day is long to his wife. Had any woman grabbed his crotch (aside from Mrs. G.) I am sure he would have fled red-faced into his room and locked the door.

There's a lot of offensive material in here, starting with the dust jacket. All in all, any author that smears U.S. Grant as badly as this deserves all the negative reviews. Avoid this trash like the plague.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and Interesting, August 10, 2000

By 

Sarah Hull (Ocean City, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grant Speaks (Hardcover)

I find it funny that some reviews tell people to read biographies rather than this fictional work. If you're interested in a history lesson this likely isn't the book for you. I'm sure you'll glean the general flow of Grant's life from GRANT SPEAKS, but biography it's not. And I can't be happier.

This book is a page-turner. While rooted in history, it diverges in wonderfully creative ways! It is a bold book with something to say about Grant, the period in America, and the human condition in general.

At times I felt the book tried too hard to be funny when all it needed was to look at the humanity it had set up, but overall this a solid four-star selection.