With hundreds of thousands of Americans watching the new History Channel miniseries “Grant,” I have been asked by several people for recommendations on books to read about Ulysses S. Grant besides Ron Chernow’s popular 2018 biography. Here are a few of my suggested volumes.
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity 1822–1865 (2000) by historian Brooks D. Simpson is a groundbreaking biographic work by one of the finest Grant Scholars. Much of the “re-evaluation” of Grant we keep hearing is new to Chernow, was actually pioneered by Simpson a quarter of a century ago in this and the next book on my list.
Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 (1991), also by Brooks Simpson, is an eye opening work that refutes the tired story that Grant was a great general who was a political naif. Grant’s dogged rise to military command was accompanied by his self-education education in politics.
From 1864 until he left the White House in 1877, Grant was constantly in Washington. During the Johnson Administration, Grant became the most powerful counterweight to the conservative president. Simpson’s coverage of the often neglected period between the end of the war and his election as president left many of us praying for a third volume focusing on Grant as president. Alas, that third volume has not arrived.
U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009) by Joan Waugh is a very good one-volume book on all of Grant’s life, and even his afterlife! Grant’s boyhood, his West Point years, the Mexican War, his frontier posts, and his marriage, as well as his Civil War triumphs and his political life are all well described. Waugh also looks at how Grant shaped our understanding of the war through his Memoirs, and how he was honored when he died. Finally, she describes the way his memory has been used and distorted over the last century-and-a-quarter.
The final book in this short list is The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Grant himself. The book was finished just before Grant’s death and it was a massive best-seller. Grant is a good writer and he was edited by Mark Twain, so this has come to be regarded as one of the best memoirs by any president. The annotated edition edited by scholar John F. Marszalek is the best edition, but you can find free e-book versions without the annotation on-line. The Memoirs focuses on his military career, its only real drawback.
I have read dozens of books on various aspects of Grant’s career, but I think that these are the best books for you to extend your reading on him after you watch the miniseries. I have also posted a number of reviews of other volumes that deal with Grant’s life and presidency. All are worthy works, but these are the best for the general reader, in my opinion.
Let us know what books you think we should read on Grant.
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These are excellent suggestions.