Monday, October 12, 2020

reading: grant

There are two kinds of annoying biography:

1. The kind where the author hates the subject.
2. The kind where the author loves the subject.

This one, a biography of Ulysses S. Grant by Ron Chernow, is so far the second. I’m a hundred pages in, out of 960-odd. It’s a slightly disjointed read, in that bouncing-from-source-to-source and speculating-about-motives kind of way. It tells us how great its subject is with a regularity that quickly becomes grating. Still, it’s full of detail and deeply researched. I’m learning stuff and I’ll likely persist.

p1k3 / 2020 / 10 / 12
tags: topics/books, topics/history, topics/reading, topics/war