Somebody needs to induct author Ron Chernow into the Writer’s Cramp Society of America. He can take his place beside James Michener and David McCullough for writing huge-but-readable books big enough to break your wrist every time you pick them up.
He may be most famous for Alexander Hamilton, the book that inspired the runaway-hit musical. His latest is Grant, as in Ulysses S., Civil War general and president of the United States.
In my schoolgirl days, my takeaway on Grant was: sorry, incompetent drunk. In my East Coast days, I learned that Grant’s Tomb is a major landmark in New York City, sitting there on the Upper West Side, overlooking the Hudson River.
Why would a sorry, incompetent drunk get such a big tomb?
Chernow can answer that question for you. Grant failed at farming and store-keeping. His math-professor ambitions never panned out. His father put him down, then later drafted off his fame. His father-in-law never missed a chance to point out his faults. Grant was a man who failed at everything until he stumbled onto the one thing that he was born to do.
Even when Grant became the man that people had to sit up and notice, his fortunes zig-zagged, partly from his own decency and kindness.
Chernow makes history readable. I’ll confess, though, that the presidential chapters were harder going that Grant’s early life and the Civil War battles.
Get the Kindle version. This book will take you awhile, and you don’t want it to crush you in your bed as you read a chapter before nodding off.
It will be money well-spent.
Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives on VisualHunt
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