"Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Ron Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency."--Book jacket....

Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without...

Horace Porter served as lieutenant colonel on Ulysses S. Grant's staff from April 1864 to the end of the Civil War. He accompanied Grant into battle in the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg campaigns, and was present at Lee's surrender at McLean's house. Throughout the war, he kept extensive notes that capture Grant's conversations, as well as his own observations of military life. Porter's portrait of Grant is the most comprehensive first-hand...

"At a prominent university in the Washington area, a man suddenly stands in the middle of Grant's lecture, pulls a gun, screams "The South shall rise again," and attempts to assassinate Grant. Ever close at hand, Murphy kills the assassin before he can carry out his assassination plot. Shortly thereafter, the real motive for the assassination attempt is revealed when it is learned that the niece of the British Ambassador, a student at the Washington-area...

"We were as brothers," William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible. Heeding the call to save the Union, each struggled past political hurdles to join the war effort. Taking each other's measure at the Battle of Shiloh,...

A dual biography of two iconic leaders: how they fought a bloody, brutal war then forged a lasting peace that fundamentally changed our nation They met in person only four times, yet these two men determined the outcome of the Civil War and cast competing styles for the reunited nation. Each the subject of innumerable biographies, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee have never before been paired as they are here. Exploring their personalities,...

Nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers were forged in the heat of Vera Cruz and Monterrey. The Mexican War has faded from our national memory, but it was a struggle of enormous significance: it was the first U.S war waged on foreign soil; and it nearly doubled our nation's land area. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came together to fight as friends, only years later to fight as enemies. This is their...