"Best Bios, Grant and Lee?" Topic

Hi all,

I'm developing a growing interest in the period, and would like to read up on the two figures mentioned. Recommendations on the best place to start for a biography of each, please?

FMB

Grant Takes Command by Bruce Canton

Grant's memoirs are fabulous, and can be had free online.

Here are one man's opinions of a number of them:

link

Grant Takes Command by Bruce Canton

Along with Lloyd Lewis's Captain Sam Grant and Catton's Grant Moves South.

Also, Grant's Autobiography is worthy of attention.

If you are looking for a focus on the Civil War, then the Lewis / Catton trilogy should be the first thing you read on Grant. "Grant Moves South" is my favorite of the three. After that, you can moves on to Grant's memoirs, which are, as Mark has noted, excellent.

JFC Fuller wrote a phenomenal book comparing Lee and Grant called "Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship." It's the best comparison I have ever read of the two as generals and strategists.

I cannot think of any definitive Lee biography off the top of my head. He has been so lionized that any criticism is met with instant opprobrium, which makes authors cautious, I think, to write much about him at all. Maybe Freeman's biography comes the closest.

I guess the Lee book I have enjoyed the most was a collection of essays edited by Gary Gallagher. It's not really a biography, though.

I can also recommend William Davis' "Crucible of Command" published in 2014 by DeCapo Press. Written as a "dual biography" it traces the lives of both Lee and Grant from their youth through their last meeting in 1868.

I thought it gave excellent insights into the actual personalities of the two commanders, as well as a fresh take on the political context of the war and how their relations with their respective political authorities affected and constrained each commander in the field.

Honestly, my favorite bio was Traveller by Richard Adams.

Thanks, gang, lots to get me going here.

Fuller's book is excellent.