Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President (Modern Library Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Geoffrey Perret (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Paperbacks | Publication Date: December 29, 1998

Woven through Perret's exploration of Grant as soldier and president is the author's portrait of the American hero as a person, including his frustrating studies at West Point and his days of poverty.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ulysses S. Grant worked with Red Cloud, chief of the Lakota Sioux, to create an arguably more humane Indian policy--"no president could have done more," argues Geoffrey Perret, whose reassessment of Grant as a politician is his biography's finest achievement. Not that he scants his subject's military genius; the relentless, aggressive campaigns that won the Civil War are skillfully outlined and analyzed. Grant emerges in this nuanced portrait as a quintessential American: he is depicted as a restless rover perpetually in search of "movement, drama, adventure." Firmly situated in his time, he nonetheless seems a strikingly modern man. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Often dismissed as a butcher general who won his battles by force of numbers, Grant recently has found favor among historians who appreciate his genius in adapting Americans to modern war. Military historian Perret (Old Soldiers Never Die, LJ 3/15/96) joins the march. He paints Grant as a man of no show but much private passion who won by understanding how armies worked and by using the resources at hand. Perret offers some new information and insight into Grant's private life and character but does not advance much in terms of Grant's generalship, the nature of war, or an understanding of the age. Weak in political and social history but strong on the military side, Perret's readable book does not match up with William McFeely's largely negative biography, Grant (LJ 2/15/87), or Brooks Simpson's adulatory Let Us Have Peace (Univ. of North Carolina, 1991), but it does give a balanced view. For large public and academic libraries.
-?Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037575220X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375752209
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,844,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the very best biographies that I have ever rea, November 22, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This is one of the very best biographies that I have ever read. In addition to being written in a lyrical prose, it offers a much needed corrective to the withering, and unfair, historical portrait that Grant has been stuck with. Let's face it, here's what most of us know about Grant: he didn't do much at West Point, was a failure in business, drank his way through the Civil War, winning only because he was willing to kill his own soldiers, oversaw one of the most corrupt Presidential administrations ever and died. The most important previous biography, William McFeely's Pulitzer Prizewinning Grant (1981), took a sufficiently negative view of Grant that it did little to change, and even reinforced, these received truths. Like almost all misrepresentations in History, there are kernels of truth in the portrait, but it leaves out much and Perret is able to convincingly challenge much of the rest of it.

Missing from that portrayal are Grant's fundamental decency as a man, his exemplary service in the Mexican War, his genuine strategic insight and at times nearly prophetic foresight (as when he offered to have a Cabinet member put his personal wealth in a blind trust), and his authorship of perhaps the best book written by a U. S. President (only Teddy Roosevelt can really challenge for the title), one of the great books of the 19th Century, his Personal Memoirs. Perret gives each of these the full treatment that it deserves and Grant's exceptional character and his control over his emotions and ego run like a leit motif throughout the book.

Perhaps more importantly, Perret takes on each of the negative characterizations that has accrued to Grant's reputation over the years. Grant did perform indifferently at the Military Academy, but Perret points out that simply attending college (and West Point was one of the best in the world) put Grant in the educated elite of his time. Moreover, besides being an exceptional and much envied horseman, Grant performed well in classes that interested him and went on to study military history and tactics for the rest of his life, developing a really fine analytical mind on military matters.

Grant did not do well in business, but he was scrupulously honest and as he first demonstrated as a quartermaster in the Mexican War, he was capable, even gifted, at managing materiel. Later when he was running the entire Union Army, he did so professionally and even brilliantly. It's hard to see how he can be faulted so heavily for bad luck running small businesses and given so little credit for managing what must have been one of the largest enterprises in human history up until that time.

Grant did drink, but there is no evidence that it ever effected the performance of his duties. Also, he drank only when he was lonely. Any time that his wife was in the vicinity he was a virtual teetotaler.

As to the manner in which he won the war, it seems increasingly possible to me that there were only three men on Earth who genuinely understood the dynamics of the Civil war as it was unfolding: Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Winfield Scott, as the War began, enunciated his Anaconda Plan, calling for the North to exploit its superior numbers and for Union troops to close off the Mississippi and then start squeezing the South like a rodent in the grip of a snake. But Scott was an old man by that time and was not capable of managing the effort. Lincoln knew that Scott was correct in his strategic vision, but it fell to him to keep the political plates spinning and to find the generals to carry out the plan. Destiny handed him the ideal instrument in U.S. Grant who grasped the vision and had the iron will to carry it out. If Grant was sometimes willing to suffer losses as the price of engaging the foe, he never wasted lives intentionally and was shattered by the occasions where men under his command did die futilely.

Finally, on the issue of the corruption in his administration, Perret makes one point that I found profound. Grant's administration was not any more corrupt than the ones that succeeded it, but the fact that it was more corrupt than the ones that preceded it has caused it to be seen as extraordinarily scandalous. And it was more scandal ridden, not because of anything intrinsic to Grant, but because one of the consequences of the War was that the Federal government had grown tremendously in size and there was simply more there to steal. Similarly, the explosive growth in the size of government in the past sixty years has been accompanied by an unending series of scandals regardless of administration.

In the end, whether or not Perret succeeds in winning all of these battles to reclaim Grant's reputation, he definitely does get the reader to take a step back and look at Grant with a fresh perspective. The Grant who emerges from this portrait is a genuine American hero and one of the most honorable and decent men ever to become President. This is an outstanding book and a valuable reassessment of a seemingly ordinary man who called upon his own extraordinary will to achieve great things and shape American history. Most highly recommended.

GRADE: A+

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of history's most enigmatic personalities., February 18, 2001

By 

Donal A. O'Neill - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This life of Grant is written with grace and verve and it sweeps the reader along from the first page - indeed it is hard to see how any single volume biography could accomplish more. At the end of it however - as at the end of all writings on and by Grant - one is still left bemused by the contradictions in this ostensibly simple, but in reality enormously complex personality. Grant did no less than win the most complex war yet fought by humanity, managing (a word that immediately comes to mind in regard to Grant) in the process unprecedented numbers of troops and mastering the deployment of new weapons systems - such as the river gun-boats - that emerged during the conflict. His tactical abilities grew to cope with exponentially rising sizes of forces and his strategic thinking was distinguished by clarity, courage and ruthlessness. His leadership was such as to carry both officers and men with him in acceptance of brutal solutions to terrible dilemmas. His embodiment of the Churchillian ideal of magnanimity in victory laid the foundations for the re-United States. Few men have carried such a heavy burden with such decency and generosity: power did not make him arrogant nor success dehumanise him. The Mexican War had already given indications of these qualities and yet after it Grant lapsed into virtual failure and demoralisation. The section of this book dealing with the years immediately preceding the Civil War are painful to read, offering an almost too-close insight into the near despair of a decent man unable - perhaps too proud - to find a role in a thrusting, money-grubbing and cut-throat civilian society. Only five years separate the almost penniless failure's humiliating appeal to his father for a job in the family leather store from the surrender-negotiation at Appomattox Court House, and three years more saw him President, albeit reluctantly. In the story of the White House years - and beyond - there is a strong impression of a man bored, part amused, part disgusted, by the pettiness of the scene around him. The set-backs and scandals of his administrations, none of which involved any hint of personal advantage to himself, seem ultimately to stem from an inner abdication. One gains a strong sense of a man who has confronted the absolute and who afterwards finds the relative unworthy of his energies or passions. Throughout this period he nevertheless continued to evoke huge loyalty and a third Presidential term could have been his in 1880, after Hayes' tenure, had he chosen to commit himself fully - but once again there is that impression of a man bored and distant. Only in the last terrible months of his life, enduring financial ruin and hideous pain, does Grant again rise to heroic status, not only producing his memoirs in extremis, but doing so with an elegance that make them an American classic. Nothing is simple in this story - not Grant's emotional and family life, his struggle with alcohol, his politics, his innate integrity - and least of all the origins of his military genius.

This complex, absorbing and inspiring story is well told by Mr.Perret, who finds the right balance between all major elements. The events, excitingly told though they may be, are not allowed to dominate, and Grant's personality is at all times at the centre of the narrative. Quotations are well chosen to enliven the text and there are dozens of illuminating vignettes to add colour and immediacy. The Civil War years are obviously at the heart of the book and Mr.Perret finds the correct balance between overview and detail in handling Grant's vast campaigns. A minor complaint must however be the shortage and low quality of the maps, essential for a work even at this level. A final point is that readers who come to Grant through this volume will delight in "The Armies of U.S.Grant" by James R.Arnold, which traces Grant's growth as a commander in considerable detail and which is also colourful, readable, and enlivened by memorable quotes from Grant and his contemporaries.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Relax! It's Not That Bad!, August 14, 2000

By 

Gregory S. Clifford (Quincy, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

You know, many people love to read about History, but we all can't be such incredible experets like our fellow critics here at Amazon. Do you like a great story? Well this one is for you. You don't have to be "Mr. Historian" to enjoy it, and you're not lost in the sometimes tedious and yawn-prevoking details history can provide. This is about an intriging real-life character named Ulysses Grant. What an incredible adventure through the 1800's his life was. The book flows and give you an idea of the type of person Grant was and the time in America he grew up in. The author is certainly a fan of Grant, but does point out all his shortcomings. Bottom line, if you're starting to get to know the Civil War, Mexican War, Lincoln and that time period in History, then you'll enjoy seeing some of it through the eyes of Ulysses Grant. Read the book, you'll like it. I've read many Civil War books and biographies and I did. You can always go back later after you've read the other 45 Grant books and say how much you hated it!