The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017, $39.95 Grant: The Complete Annotated EditionĮdited by John F. Grant Presidential Library, succeed admirably in their own important work-namely, the most thoroughly annotated edition of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Marszelak, executive director of the U.S. What Grant produced-with throat cancer having placed him at death’s door-was a work that, while assuredly worthy of the sort of scrutiny that all such works merit, deservedly won enduring recognition as a truly great work of American literature. Their considerable success in tarnishing Grant’s military reputation had to be countered. Moreover, by the 1880s Southern writers who sought to promulgate a myth of the Civil War that emphasized the Confederacy’s martial and moral superiority had been all too successful in their efforts. He also understood that his image needed repair because of his presidency’s association with Gilded Age tawdriness. In addition, Grant understood that he had won the admiration of the American people not simply because he won the Civil War, but also because of the style with which he conducted himself and his image as a simple soldier. When he began work on his memoirs, Grant had to repair his family’s finances, tattered by ill-advised investments. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition Closeįew authors have been as successful in achieving what they set out to do as Ulysses S. Review | The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S.

Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant