Grant

A weighty tome

At 959 pages, Ron Chernow’s Grant took me a few months to get through but it was worth it. I saw the Civil War from a new perspective — the western campaigns (Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga), the overland campaign and Appomattox. The chronology of the backlash against Reconstruction in the South should be required reading for every high school American history class. In the end, I came away with a new appreciation for one of our lesser-known “well-known” presidents. While he was not perfect, Grant’s role in one of the most transfomative periods in our history cannot be understated.