When the small, stoop-shouldered man in a rumpled uniform and scuffed boots, accompanied by a thirteen-year-old boy, asked for a room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., he was offered a small room on the top floor. But when the clerk saw the man's signature, suddenly a suite was found for him. The man was Ulysses S. Grant, and President Lincoln recently had appointed him commander in chief of the Union forces. Noted historian Albert Marrin tells how this reluctant soldier became the leader who was able to bring final victory to the Union after years of bloody, wrenching civil war. Along the way he describes how soldiers lived in army camps: their food, their recreation, their thoughts, taken from diaries and letters home, and brings to the reader the experience of war: the fear, the deadly mistakes, the early medical services to the wounded, and always the heroism. Dr. Marrin re-creates the battles of Grant's campaigns and puts them in historical perspective. He makes it clear to his readers why both Abraham Lincoln and the ordinary Yankee soldier were willing to trust the outcome of the war and the future of the country to this unlikely hero.
Albert Marrin is an award winning author of over 40 books for young adults and young readers and four books of scholarship. These writings were motivated by the fact that as a teacher, first in a junior high school in New York City for nine years and then as professor of history and chairman of the history department at Yeshiva University until he retired to become a full time writer, his paramount interest has always been to make history come alive and accessible for young people.
Winner of the 2008 National Endowment for Humanities Medal for his work, which was presented at the White House, was given "for opening young minds to the glorious pageant of history. His books have made the lessons of the past come alive with rich detail and energy for a new generation."
Dr. Marrin's numerous other awards include the Washington Post Childrens'Book Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the James Madison Award for Lifetime Achievement, several Horn Book awards by the Boston Globe, consistently appearing on the best book of the year lists of the American Library Association, frequent recognition by Book Lists, and the Western Heritage Award for best juvenile nonfiction book presented at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame among others.
