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A review by jdintr
Grant by Ron Chernow
4.0
Chernow will be rightly criticized for the level of sympathy he shows to Grant in this book. He goes out of his way, at times, to discredit the rumors of drunkenness that dogged Grant from his (rightful) dismissal from the Army to his death bed, where he refused even a taste of whiskey to numb the pain of throat cancer. He minimizes Grant's culpability in the corruption of his administration and the outright pyramid scheme that bankrupted him--and thousands of others--two years before his death.
Grant was a man whose blunders were almost as monumental as his achievements--saving the Union, pursuing equality and voting rights for African Americans, and becoming as president a man known for pursuing peace and laying the groundwork for international reconciliation through the United Nations.
Chernow's book is thick. Deservedly so. Grant accomplished a lot. In his day, he was seen as equal to Washington as a general (and as savior of the country). In the 130 years since his death, he has been eclipsed by the pernicious Lost Cause Movement that successfully kept the values of the Confederacy alive. Even amidst the country's strong reaction to the Charlottesville protests, I would venture that there are more statues of Robert E Lee throughout the country than of the man who ground Lee's army into dust, who leapt from victory to victory.
I guess the greatest contribution that Chernow makes to my knowledge of Grant is Grant's patriotism. It is clear that, within months of the beginning of the Civil War, Grant grasped the patriotic ideals that underpinned the word, "Union." Though married into a slave-owning family, Grant's anti-slavery views were held before the war and strengthened throughout it.
As general of the armies in the years after the war, it was Grant who kept Lincoln's ideals alive, even as Andrew Johnson retreated from ideological gains made possible from the war.
It was tough to read about Reconstruction in this book. Terrorists carrying confederate flags and dressed in white organized in the South and sought to intimidate newly enfranchised African Americans and liberal white Republicans. Chernow's descriptions of the violence, and the resolute efforts to rewrite the ending of the Civil War, are depressing, even as my own southern community fills once again with confederate flags and gun clubs in the wake of Obama's presidency. This section left me profoundly depressed for my region and my country.
Read this book! You will learn a lot, as I did, and you will become reacquainted with one of the five or six foremost Americans in history.
Grant was a man whose blunders were almost as monumental as his achievements--saving the Union, pursuing equality and voting rights for African Americans, and becoming as president a man known for pursuing peace and laying the groundwork for international reconciliation through the United Nations.
Chernow's book is thick. Deservedly so. Grant accomplished a lot. In his day, he was seen as equal to Washington as a general (and as savior of the country). In the 130 years since his death, he has been eclipsed by the pernicious Lost Cause Movement that successfully kept the values of the Confederacy alive. Even amidst the country's strong reaction to the Charlottesville protests, I would venture that there are more statues of Robert E Lee throughout the country than of the man who ground Lee's army into dust, who leapt from victory to victory.
I guess the greatest contribution that Chernow makes to my knowledge of Grant is Grant's patriotism. It is clear that, within months of the beginning of the Civil War, Grant grasped the patriotic ideals that underpinned the word, "Union." Though married into a slave-owning family, Grant's anti-slavery views were held before the war and strengthened throughout it.
As general of the armies in the years after the war, it was Grant who kept Lincoln's ideals alive, even as Andrew Johnson retreated from ideological gains made possible from the war.
It was tough to read about Reconstruction in this book. Terrorists carrying confederate flags and dressed in white organized in the South and sought to intimidate newly enfranchised African Americans and liberal white Republicans. Chernow's descriptions of the violence, and the resolute efforts to rewrite the ending of the Civil War, are depressing, even as my own southern community fills once again with confederate flags and gun clubs in the wake of Obama's presidency. This section left me profoundly depressed for my region and my country.
Read this book! You will learn a lot, as I did, and you will become reacquainted with one of the five or six foremost Americans in history.