Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

GRANT is a miracle of an historical biography. As an aficionado of all things Civil War, I thought I'd not be excited by Chernow's discussion, instead, I learned so much that I had never before read AND found myself often holding my breath because Chernow's writing is so immediate, it felt like I was experiencing the battles. I had physical reactions to many descriptions of the events in Grant's life because of the powerful descriptions by Chernow. He made me feel as if I were there with Grant and all the other characters. Chernow's writing is exciting because he seems never to use the same word twice, and it's all fresh, revealing and understandable. It's FUN to read. It's a text come alive- you can visualize the places, people, even visualize and feel the weather- when Chernow writes about about mud, I'm sloshing in it, about rivers of blood, decapitations and dismembered bodies I had visceral reactions. After reading GRANT, I tried to read Grant's autobiography, and couldn't because it was dense with minutiae, I gave up.Chernow's GRANT is food for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Yes, it's long and heavy to hold, but worth every minute and every page to read.