I heard so many recommendations to read Julius Caesar on the Conquest of Gaul and Winston Churchill on the Second World War– and the recommendations were right. We’re incredibly lucky that some great wartime leaders also happened to be great writers who chose to take the time to share their perspective on the history they helped make.

I rarely heard Ulysses S Grant mentioned as being in the same class of writer- but after reading his memoirs I think he should be. He was obviously a central wartime leader like they were, the highest-ranking general in the victorious Union army by the end of the US Civil War. But I’d never heard how he was also a great writer. He makes history like the campaigns of the Mexican and Civil wars feel understandable, while also sharing funny human stories. Some of these asides feel like they could have been written by Mark Twain, who did in fact help Grant edit and publish his memoirs.

It’s the rare doorstopper book that I wish were much longer- Grant was a two-term US President but his memoirs don’t cover those years at all. I don’t know how much of this is because he wanted to avoid the topic (he’s usually considered a much better general than president) and how much is that he simply ran out of time by dying of cancer.

A few highlights to give you an idea of what Grant was like. Certainly more like a modern economist than I expected:

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