Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865
by Brooks D. Simpson, Brooks Simpson
Book Summary Information
Author: Brooks D. Simpson, Brooks SimpsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-02-21
ISBN: 0395659949
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865
Book Review: Not a biography, but biased and badly argued hagiography
Summary: 1 Stars
A good biography tells the story of a life lived, as it was lived. That is to say, it should neither anticipate events nor divert into long and dubious refutations of contrary sources in which the heavy hand of the biographer intrudes. Simpson's work fails on these and any other reasonable standard of biography or of scholarship.
Within fifty pages of the outset, Simpson interjects his opinion that Grant never drank to excess. He backs this up with no evidence, but rather interjects this to anticipate his subsequent belabored efforts to discredit every source - primary or otherwise - that contravenes his conception of the man he idolizes.
And this is a recurrent theme, both in the text and in the footnotes. EVERY intimate of Grant - journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader, Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana, staff officers and generals James Wilson and John Rawlins, and a score of others - is credited an as impeccable sources when what he wrote reinforced Simpson's conclusions of Grant's unqualifed greatness, but dismissed as liars when what they say contradicts this. This is especially the case when it comes to Grant's drinking.
Similarly, without offering clear evidence, Simpson dismisses every historian who offers conclusions that question Grant's performance as a commander as wrong. Take for example, his assertion that all three historians of the Battles for Chattanooga - McDonough, Sword, and Cozzens - are somehow wrong in their conclusions about Grant's intentions at Missionary Ridge, while he of course is right.
Read Simpson's introduction to a modern edition of Cadwallader's Three Years with Grant for more of this. Simpson sweepingly rejects all that Kenneth P. Williams, pulitizer prize winners William McFeely and Benjamin Thomas, Shelby Foote, and countless other respected historians say that is critical of Grant.
A
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