Grant

by Max Byrd

Book Overview

Like no one else writing in America today, Max Byrd, the critically acclaimed author of Jefferson and Jackson, makes history come alive. Grant:A Novelis an unforgettable portrait of America's Gilded... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553380184
• ISBN13: 9780553380187
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The Best of Byrd's President Novels

While Byrd's depictions of the two earlier presidents, in Jefferson and Jackson were good, his offering on Grant stand's out as his best. Byrd follows the same formula in this book, with fictional journalist Nicholas Trist taking on the Short/Schuyler role and providing a very compelling character and observer of Grants career, especially meaningful in that Trist is one of many Union soldiers who was 'sacrificed' at Cold Harbor on Grant's orders. Trist's encounters with Mark Twain, Henry and Clover Adams, the Camerons and other 19th century notables don't intrude at all on the narrative and provide very engaging subplots. Byrd also gives the reader a fascinating look at the start of America's Industrial Age and the sweeping changes new technology had on life and politics in the 1880's.

A Fine Book with a Strange Twist

A surprising and fascinating book. Author Max Byrd follows the same basic structure as in his previous historical novels Jefferson and Jackson: youngish writer with one foot in Europe and the other in America tries to penetrate the essential mystery of the title character by researching the collected and conflicting observations of well-placed contemporaries. In Grant's case of course, the essential mystery is how Sam Grant, an alcoholic and utter failure approaching 40 years of age, could become U. S. Grant, the man who took command of the oft-beaten Union Army and saved his country, becoming in the process a future two-term president and "the most famous man in the world". Our protagonist, the fictional writer Nicholas Trist, was maimed in the war under Grant's command and thus has every reason to hate his former commander. As he works through his feelings about Grant and more details of various parts of Grant's life are revealed, we draw our own conclusions as well. The events of the novel take place after Grant's military and presidential careers are concluded and concern his attempt to obtain a third term and the well-known (and here well-told) efforts of the bankrupt and dying Grant to complete his memoirs in order to provide for his family. As expected in a book of this nature various real-life personages appear throughout (e.g. Mark Twain, William Tecumseh Sherman). Unexpectedly, one of these characters emerges as the subject of the novel just as much as Grant is. In real-life, famed 19th-century historian Henry Adams expressed his contemptuous dismissal of Grant's abilities and so Adams' prominent role in the book is no surprise, especially given his irresistibly (for a writer) vexatious personality . Where the novel takes its strange turn is the role Adams' wife Marion Hooper Adams (or his"doomed wife Clover" as the jacket blurb would have it) plays. Though hating her husband, Trist becomes friends with the witty, talented, unattractive, and unappreciated Clover and it is their conversations which become the most moving part of the book. I believe the author came to find Mrs. Adams' sad story even more interesting than Grant's and so powerful is Byrd's writing in these passages that I did as well. The book gains strength as we watch and she watches her own life slowly unravel. The most unusual thing of all is that her story and Grant's story are for the most part unconnected and the Trist character in effect shuttles back and forth between Grant's and Clover's lives. Since the novel is called Grant I was very curious to see how Byrd would in the end link the two stories. He does so masterfully but almost imperceptibly, in one seemingly off-hand comment Clover makes near the end of the book, contrasting Grant's actions in his final days to an act of her husband who was motivated by something quite different. I most strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone who enjoyed Byrd's previous books. I hesitate t

Another Max Byrd Triumph

For those who have read either of Max Byrd's previous historical novels (Jefferson and Jackson), Grant: A Novel will seem like a natural extension of the story of America's past that Byrd brings to life in his books. These novels are not so much about the title characters as they are about the age in which the characters lived and acted. His central figures provide a pretext for exposing the reader to the complex detail of everyday life in the past and manage to make that life accessable and real in a way that books of history and biography seldom do. In the character of U.S. Grant, Byrd presents a figure that is almost a proxy for the America of his day; a seemingly simple, inarticulate, rural man who seems to have few prospects, yet despite failure in his early army career, addiction to drink and abject poverty, rises to become the most successful general in American history, President for two terms and the most famous man in the world, only to suffer scandal, bankrupcy, and a painful death from throat cancer. If Grant were not, on the surface, such an "ordinary" man, this would be the stuff of Greek tragedy. And like the boom and bust economy of America's 19th Century, the ups and downs in Grant's life tell us more about the broader social, economic, and political forces that were at work than they do about the man himself.The story of Grant's life is preseneted in bits and pieces and not in chronological order. The subplot that pulls the various threads of Grant's story together is the work of Nicholas Trist, a fictional newspaper reporter who lost an arm fighting under Grant at Cold Harbor, and, needless to say, is ambivalent about his former commander. Trist is a totally believable creation and a very sympathetic character. Through his eyes the reader gets to experience a wide variety of Grant's contemporaries, including Henry Adams and William T. Sherman, whose commentary not only advances the story of Grant but also illuminates the many conflicting forces at work in American society at the time. This is an absolutely fascinating book and I was really sorry to see it end. Grant's final triumph - recovering his family's fortune and fallen honor by publishing his memoirs, written as he was dying of throat cancer - is as amazing a turn around as any plot twist in fiction, and much more satisfying.

The Best Book of the Year

Max Byrd has done it again! He expertly brings Grant and Twain alive in his new masterpiece. This is one of those books that you can't put down once you have started it!

A Must-Read

Max Byrd has done it again! Grant is a fascinating novel that takes the reader fully into the world of Grant and Twain. The Booklist review is right on target, and I fully agree that this is historical fiction at its best! Don't miss this one!