Volume 28, Number 4 · March 19, 1981
The Enigma of U.S. Grant
By C. Vann Woodward
Grant: A Biography
by William S. McFeely
Norton, 519 pp., $19.95
Biography is one thing, history another. Most of the earlier biographers of U.S. Grant, however, have responded to the formidable challenge the subject presents by writing chunks of history, military and political. Some of that history has been quite good. Far the best and largest part has been military history, and surely that is a story worth telling. But President Grant was the central figure in American political history for more than twice as long as General Grant was a dominant figure in Civil War history. And the two careers together account for less than a dozen of his sixty-three years. What then about the enigmatic and insignificant-looking man behind it all, the little man with the hurt look in his eyes?
Review, 3877 words
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