Ulysses S. Grant: An Album

Acclaimed historian William S. McFeely has assembled a dramatic collection of photographs that reveals the people, places, and events that shaped the life of one of the towering figures of American history. Treating seven aspects of Grant's life (1822-1885), McFeely gives us both the private man and the public figure. Grant's view on slavery, his love life, the houses he lived in, his understanding of war—particularly the Civil War—and the trip around the world that he and his wife Julia took (with remarkable illustrations made at the time) are all here. We watch photographers create a hero out of an obscure officer and enhance our understanding of Grant's remarkable Personal Memoirs. A beautiful volume, essential for the library of any Civil War buff, this book offers a wealth of images that illuminate the man and his times in a way that words alone cannot.

A pictorial biography by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian that presents Ulysses S. Grant in new and fascinating ways.

Publishers Weekly

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of General Grant now offers this "album" of his life and works. The selection of 100 photographs and illustrations (deserving praise goes to researcher Neil Giordano) is superior, considering that only one pre-Civil War photograph of Grant exists. They do, however, lack captions, and the descriptions of them in the text are not always properly placed for easy identification. The text presents other problems: not all of McFeely's seven essays on different aspects of Grant-emancipator, fond husband, photographic subject, world traveler, author of a superb autobiography-are equally well composed, and the pieces on Grant's opposition to slavery don't say enough about how he managed Reconstruction as president. The author also goes to the lengths of referring to Julia Grant as "silly" without supporting his case. The essay on the photographs of Grant is concise and cogent, however, and includes some wartime magazine illustrations that have to be seen to be believed. McFeely also does full justice to Grant's memoirs. One has the feeling that the author returned to this familiar subject as something of a labor of love, without conceding anything to the novice student of Grant or the Civil War. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

William S. McFeely, the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Georgia, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Grant. He lives in Wellfleet and Cambridge, Massachusetts.