3 Review(s)

Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography is undoubtedly one of the best among great military figures' autobiographies, and it is possibly the most significant literary work of any American president: a lucid, riveting, and brutally honest record of triumph and failure. These memoirs are a captivating, very emotional narrative of a brilliant man presented with remarkable courage as he reflects on the circumstances that shaped his life and character, from his frontier youth to his valour in war to the terrible poverty from which the Civil War ironically liberated him. It is a success of the art of autobiography, written under adversity—Grant was dying of throat cancer—and encouraged and edited from the start by Mark Twain.