The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant · 1885
Grant wrote his memoirs in four months while dying of throat cancer, racing against death to provide for his family. The result is the greatest military memoir in American history: a clear-eyed, self-effacing, psychologically honest account of the Civil War by the man who won it. Mark Twain published it.
The case against
Grant stops exactly where the hard questions begin: the memoir ends with the war, so his scandal-plagued presidency and Reconstruction's collapse go unexamined. Long stretches are regiment-level logistics, brigades crossing rivers for pages at a time, and the famous plainness doubles as reticence; the man who drank, failed at business, and watched his cabinet rot stays off the page.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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