Ron Chernow · 2017 · overland

Ron Chernow's sweeping biography traces Ulysses S. Grant from a tanner's son in rural Ohio through West Point, the Mexican War and frontier failure to his rise as the Union's greatest general and two-term president, and a final race against cancer to finish his memoirs.

1. 1
   Point Pleasant

   Hiram Ulysses Grant is born in a two-room cottage on the Ohio River to a striving tanner's family.

2. 2
   West Point

   A reluctant cadet, mis-registered as Ulysses S. Grant, he excels at horsemanship and scrapes through the military academy.

3. 3
   Mexico City

   As a young quartermaster he serves through the Mexican-American War, learning the craft of command he later calls an unjust conflict.

4. 4
   Fort Vancouver

   Posted to the lonely Pacific Northwest and cut off from his family, Grant sinks into drink and resigns from the army in disgrace.

5. 5
   Galena

   Reduced to clerking in his father's leather-goods store, he is a failed man of thirty-nine when the Civil War calls him back.

6. 6
   Vicksburg

   His brilliant, dogged campaign takes the Mississippi stronghold, splits the Confederacy, and makes his name.

7. 7
   Chattanooga

   Breaking the siege in Tennessee, Grant is given command of all the Union armies.

8. 8
   Appomattox

   After the grinding Overland Campaign and the fall of Petersburg, he accepts Lee's surrender with famous magnanimity.

9. 9
   Washington

   Elected to two terms as president, Grant fights for Reconstruction and Black civil rights against a rising tide of terror.

10. 10
    Mount McGregor

    Bankrupt and dying of throat cancer, he finishes his celebrated memoirs days before his death in the New York mountains.