Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was raised in North Carolina.(My great grandfather was captured at the bloody angle at Spotsylvania Courthouse) and thus had the traitional southern notion that Grant won most of his acclaim by being better supplied and having so many more troops than his opponents. I have always been a history buff, having read most of Mr Chernow’s previous books and many more, but this book changed my mind on a number of issues and convinced me that I had not given Mr Grant the acclaim he is due. The appropriate analogy, I believe,is that if Mr Lincoln was the engineer driving the ship of state during the war, Mr Grant was certainly the train plugging through and getting the work done. This book also disabused me in it’s 1000 pages of. my previous notion that states rights had much of anything to do with causing the war because I remember James Longstreet being quoted about never having heard of the term several years after the war was over. As for Grant’s presidency, he is remembered for all the corruption, and while it’s true that he probably couldn’t recognize a flim flam man when he saw him , the federal government was growing exponentially at the time and he personally was always honorable. There well might have been no reconstruction to speak of unless he hadn’t personally seen to it and made it happen. His story reminds me a little of the current confederate monument controversy. Most of them were put up long after the war was over and were put up largely by public officials looking To rewrite the history of a glorious and chivalrous past that in truth wasn’t really so glorious or chivalrous. It was really eye opening to me to read about how much Grant was revered in both the north and south while he lived and if you don’t shed a few tears while reading the last chapter, as I did, then you are truly hard- hearted.i really enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to anyone for it’s fresh take on an old subject.