Grant and Sherman

Booklist

"One of the big-profile history books of the season and highly recommended for all history-minded readers."

Josiah Bunting III

This book is a powerful and illuminating study of a military collaboration that won the war for the Union. That collaboration flowed from an enduring friendship between men who were superficially dissimilar but profoundly alike in their understanding of the brutish, unchanging demands and consequences of war.
— The Washington Post

The Richmond Register

"Flood is one of the best narrators of popular history in print today. His work is readable, exciting and informative. I find his writing just good as, if not better than, such popular writers as David McCollough and Stephen Ambrose. A novelist before taking up historical narration, Flood's skill allows him to paint portraits of characters and the landscape on which they act even as the action proceeds at a lively pace."

Publishers Weekly

This dual biography of the Union's most celebrated Civil War generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, examines the partnership that effectively ended the worst bloodshed in American history. The avuncular timbre of Flood's voice fits the narrative nicely, his masculine tone sounding almost battle-worn at times. His delivery, however, feels slack and his energy is too subdued in places. Authors who narrate their own stories carry the burden of rendering fresh long-lived-in material. Often, the result is a straight read rather than vivid animation of words and characters. In Grant and Sherman, you can almost see Flood reading his sentences, reading the punctuation, pausing that full moment before quotes. The production also includes an author interview, during which Flood manages to react naturally to the artificial-sounding questions. And to his credit, he doesn't encapsulate the audiobook in his answers, but offers fresh thoughts on the topic plus insight into the genesis of his project. This is a worthy subject, but one Flood likely imparts more successfully in print. Simultaneous release with the FSG hardcover (Reviews, June 27). (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Flood (Lee: The Last Years) presents the extraordinary friendship between two Union generals that changed the course of the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, both West Point graduates, were unlikely candidates to become heroes during this turbulent period in American history. Both men failed miserably in business ventures before the outbreak of the conflict, but their partnership on and off the battlefield enabled the North to achieve victory. The author provides an analysis of a friendship that endured despite personal, military, and political struggles. Grant's "total war" strategy, to maintain pressure on Lee's army and damage the economic resources of the enemy to wage war, found its perfect counterpart in Sherman's March to the Sea campaign. For further study of key military figures, readers should consult T. Harry Williams's McClellan, Sherman, and Grant and his Lee, Grant, and Sherman: A Study in Leadership in the 1864-65 Campaign. This work includes an extensive bibliography of secondary sources and published primary sources, but it could have been improved by more research in archival manuscript collections. However, Flood's fluid prose style makes this a very enjoyable read. Highly recommended for academic libraries that serve undergraduate programs. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.]-Gayla Koerting, Univ. of South Dakota Libs., Vermillion Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A well-crafted study of "two failed men with great potential" without whom the Civil War might have ended differently. Flood (Hitler, 1989) opens with a dispiriting account of Ulysses S. Grant, the Mexican War hero and former Army captain who, in 1860 at the age of 38, found himself a clerk in a leather-goods store in northwestern Illinois; it would take a cataclysmic war for him to have a chance to redeem himself. As for Sherman, the beginning of the conflict found him heading a military school in Louisiana; after fighting at Bull Run, he was assigned to head a force on the Kentucky-Tennessee frontier, where he seems to have struggled with a few personal demons that for a time debilitated him. Sherman was relieved of command, the local papers reporting that he was insane; later, thanks to the efforts of Gen. Henry Halleck, Sherman was rehabilitated and eventually allowed to raise a division of his own. Assigned to the western campaign under Grant, Sherman got his first taste of his commander's ways at Shiloh, where Sherman was prepared to counsel retreat but held himself from doing so when Grant replied to his remark, "We've had the devil's own day of it, haven't we," with, "Yes. . . . Lick 'em tomorrow, though." What was to have been Beauregard's victory turned out to be a great Southern defeat, and the beginning of the end for the South. Flood's overarching theme of Grant and Sherman's friendship, born in fire, is sometimes swept under by a surfeit of Big Picture historical detail, but in those instances, the book becomes a careful survey of the Civil War in the West. Of interest to students of early modern warfare, in particular, is Flood's account of how Sherman, always in closecontact with Grant, conducted his scorched-earth campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina-and how both generals detested the press, a theme that resounds in our own time. A worthy contribution to the Civil War literature.