Mark Twain used his grand power of persuasion—while I was reading his burly autobiography—to convince me to tackle the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. It is not really my type of book. I am not a Civil War buff (there are still a few of us) but I knew this memoir had been dubbed an American classic and I wanted to hear what the general had to say.
It is a birdseye view—you would scarcely know that the soldiers and their families suffered in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history except that Grant briefly tells you so. He does not make you see or feel it.
In spite of that failing, the book should be read by most Americans. It gives you a sense of the sweep and magnitude of it all—though I have to admit I couldn’t wait for the war to be over.
If you really want to understand this transformative explosion, you need to watch Ken Burns’s Civil War series and perhaps read the fabulous writer Tony Horwitz’s book Confederates in the Attic. These might be enough if you don’t want to wade into the tens of thousands books on the war. Together they paint a picture of what we won and what we didn’t when it comes to America’s original sin. Why there are so many reenactors, both where they belong and where they don’t. What is happening in 2025 will never look the same.
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