Description: Washington, Lincoln, Grant -- these were once the triumvirate of American nationalism. But like his tomb on the Hudson, Grant's reputation has fallen into disrepair, and the imagine most Americans hold of him is a caricature: someone "uniquely stupid, " an insensitive butcher as a general, an incompetent bumbler as president, and a drunk. Brooks Simpson is neither an apologist nor a critic, but in reading the original sources, he became convinced that this portrait of Grant "was not a man whom Grant's contemporaries would find recognizable." Grant was not only a great general but wrote one of the greatest memoirs in military history. He was so sensitive to suffering that he could not stand to see the bloody hides at his father's tannery. As his best friend, General Sherman, said, he was a mystery to everyone, including himself. Grant was a tangle of opposing qualities -- a relentless warrior but a generous victor, a genius who utilized uncommon sense. He was also one of the only Civil War generals who came to understand that the conflict was not just over preserving the Union but over destroying slavery as well.

Ulysses S. Grant was the nations' tragic hero, a man who never sought heroism and paid a terrible price for it. Owen Wister wrote of him, "None o our public men have a story so strange as this, " Brooks Simpson brings Grant's strange story to life in a biography that is readable, compelling, and definitive.

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