General Ulysses S. Grant: The Soldier and the Man

In his well-written account, Longacre, a prolific author of Civil War histories (most recently Confederate Goliath), illuminates not only Grant's military career but also the infrequently covered terrain of his childhood and adolescence. Admirably, Longacre resists the temptation to retroactively classify events from Grant's youth as harbingers of his greatness. In fact, it's surprising and satisfying to see just how improbable Grant's success was. While at West Point, he attained a mediocre record and held pessimistic views on his prospects as an officer. His pre-Civil War years were marred by drinking binges that Longacre convincingly argues led to Grant's unceremonious resignation from the military, and an itinerant existence that had him working as a farmer, in a real-estate office, and finally at his father's tannery. It is not an act of negligence on Longacre's part that Grant unpredictably subverts the expectations these events intimate in the reader; he similarly outstripped the expectations of his soldiers, who initially ribbed him for his modest build. Longacre writes a breezy and informative account of Grant's numerous battlefield successes, his occasional lapses into drunkenness, and run-ins with his peers, ending with the last days of the war. Longacre remains even handed throughout and maintains a lively pace without stooping to simplification.