Description: In The New York Times Book Review, Joseph Ellis praised Smith's biography of Chief Justice John Marshall as "a wholly satisfying modern biography that immediately establishes itself as the authoritative life". Stephen Ambrose called Smith's incisive portrait of General Lucius D. Clay "masterly".

Now, in his most ambitious book, Jean Smith has written a complete one-volume life of Ulysses S. Grant, the triumphant Union general and -- in Smith's opinion -- the underestimated president. Smith agrees with Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald's assessment that Grant is the most underrated American in history. He defends Grant's generalship, showing how his strategy brought victory to the Union while observing that Grant's casualty ratios were consistently lower than Robert E. Lee's. Smith offers a convincing reevaluation of Grant's two terms in office, arguing that Grant tried mightily to make Reconstruction work and that the prevailing low opinions of the Grant administration are largely unjustified.

Grant will stir controversy among historians just as surely as it will be avidly read by anyone with an interest in the Civil War.

Please Wait