Ulysses S. Grant by Brooks Simpson

Ulysses S. Grant by Brooks Simpson

Many modern historians have painted Ulysses S. Grant as a butcher, a drunk, and a failure as president. Others have argued the exact opposite and portray him with saintlike levels of ethic and intellect.

In Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822–1865, historian Brooks D. Simpson takes neither approach, recognizing Grant as a complex and human figure with human faults, strengths, and motivations. Simpson offers a balanced and complete study of Grant from birth to the end of the Civil War, with particular emphasis on his military career and family life and the struggles he overcame in his unlikely rise from unremarkable beginnings to his later fame as commander of the Union Army. Chosen as a New York Times Notable Book upon its original publication, Ulysses S. Grant is a readable, thoroughly researched portrait that sheds light on this controversial figure.

"Why, given the existence of so many other studies about the man and his times, would anyone want to read this lengthy biography? Because it is skillfully written; because Grant's life is more fully realized in it than in previous one-volume studies; and because Simpson, who has benefited from decades of Civil War study, wears his wide-ranging scholarship lightlyGuaranteed to enlighten and please anyone who hasn't had enough of the Civil War and its central figures."

—Kirkus

"This is the best study of Grant's military career since Bruce Catton's two volumes; and on many matters it exceeds Catton, as a consequence of the immense amount of Civil War scholarship during the past thirty years, which Simpson has thoroughly mastered. He has provided us with perhaps the best treatment of Union military command and strategy now in print."

—New Republic

"Serving as neither his subject's advocate nor his prosecutor, Arizona State University historian Simpson provides an eminently informed and finely balanced portrait of Ulysses S. Grant as man, husband, failed entrepreneur and shrewd, victorious general. Simpson (Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868) uses carefully excavated facts and anecdotes to reveal an individual far more complex than the caricature (drunken, barbarous in battle, corrupt when given opportunity) handed down to us by popular history. At the same time, Simpson does not gloss over Grant's shortcomings. Although a fan of the general's, Simpson is not in the business of writing apologetics, and therein lies his strength."

—Publishers Weekly (History Book Cub main selection)

Brooks D. Simpson is an American historian and writer who is currently ASU Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University. He is best known for his work on Ulysses S. Grant but has written on topics from George Washington's Supreme Court appointments to baseball great Derek Jeter. His book Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865 was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Simpson has appeared several times on C-SPAN, speaking on Grant and Henry Adams, as well as on PBS's American Experience.

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