The reader of this audiobook is superb. A lengthy book, that could have become tedious, is instead, interesting and engaging. The author's research, organization and understanding of the information is obvious. Grant becomes totally real and human.
Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, he attended West Point, and although not an outstanding student, he was good at soldiering but not much else. He tried his hand at farming and at managing his father-in-law's assets, but the forces of nature, political events beyond his control, and a frequent inability to make sound decisions, sometimes being too naïve, caused him to fail. Success came to him in the crucial battles of the wars in which he was engaged. Stationed in places he could not bring his wife and children, he was lonely, but because he was not able to accumulate a large enough fortune, to allow him to leave the service, he had to remain a soldier. He rarely returned home and only saw his second child, for the first time, after more than two years.
When his fortunes deteriorated, he asked his father for help. He entered into the business of two of his brothers and was finally good at something, other than soldiering. Asked to go back into the militia, he refused. Lincoln was President, and war was imminent because of the secession of the South. Eventually he entered the regular army. A soft-spoken, humble man, he had no remarkable accomplishments until he was a soldier; his achievements during the Civil War showed a remarkable grasp of military skill and judgment and he advanced to become head of the War Department, as part of President Johnson's cabinet, after Lincoln's assassination. Grant often disagreed with Johnson. For the sake of the Union, he ran against him and won. He was propelled mainly by his interest in the preservation of the Union and not by personal, political ambition. He did not want the accomplishments of the Civil War to be reversed by a President who sought to negate the gains achieved for the country through great hardship and loss of life.
Equal opportunity for all was the foundation of his Presidency. The Confederacy, though vanquished, was not willing to give up its lifestyle. The Ku Klux Klan ran rampant, committing murder without penalty. Were it not for Grant's intervention, sending in the army, they would have continued without check. He worked untiringly for people of color and Native American Indians.
Grant, a Republican, was preoccupied with abolishing slavery. He spearheaded the effort to give equal rights to freed slaves and fair treatment to the American Indian. Despite Grant's interest in equal rights for all, he singled out the Jews for punishment because of their control of cotton sales that funded the South's war effort. Lincoln reversed his directives because they were arbitrary, condemning a whole class of people. When running for the presidency, Grant disavowed his anti-Semitic remarks and apologized for making them. It was out of character. Grant's enormous successes and failures are detailed. Plain-speaking, open-minded and evenhanded, but unable to please his father, he goes on to become the highest ranking officer in the service of his country and a two-term President of the United States. When he dies, prematurely from Cancer, he is revered and viewed in state for days. His final resting place is Grant's tomb, a place of honor, in New York.