Last week I reported that Julia Dent Grant’s memoirs were ranked the Best Book by or about a First Lady by Town and Country Magazine. Her husband’s did not finish quite as high, but Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs were in the Top 20 of all books by United States presidents. A new annotated edition from Harvard University Press also made the Town and Country Top 20! Two editions of the same book in the Top 20! Here is what Town and Country said:
Ulysses S. Grant finished writing his memoirs just a few days before his death. Though he was ill as he wrote, his Personal Memoirs are widely regarded as one of the best presidential memoirs ever written. As the New York Times wrote of a new edition published five years ago, “What gives this peculiarly reticent book its power? Above all, authenticity. If Grant’s voice is never confessional, it almost never rings false.”
Grant mainly focuses on his military career, specifically his time in the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, and barely focuses on his presidency. After he died, Mark Twain published the two volume set, and it became a bestseller.
I am betting that most of the readers of this blog have read at least some of Grant’s Memoirs, but I doubt many have read James Buchanan’s Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, which ranked 21st on the list. According to Town and Country:
James Buchanan’s memoir was the first to be published during a president’s lifetime, detailing the lead-up to the Civil War. He defends himself, and his administration, on letting states decide the issue of slavery, and tried to minimize the role of the federal government. He’s consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, so this book is an interesting insight into his failures.
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