American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

by Ronald C. White Jr.

Brooks Simpson penned two groundbreaking books: Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction (1991) and Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822–1865 (2000). Jean Edward Smith authored the comprehensive Grant (2001). Joan Waugh herself, in U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009), offered an adroit reappraisal within the larger story of American memory. Building on what they have done, in particular by utilizing new resources, I want both to place Grant centrally in his tumultuous historical context and to make him immediate to modern audiences. I have benefited immensely from the completion—after forty-nine years—of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Superbly edited by John Y. Simon, and recently by John Marszalek, these thirty-two volumes provide both a wide-angle and a zoom lens on Grant’s ideas, thinking, and action. Multiple visits to the library have unearthed rich resources not included in the printed and online papers.