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From New York Times bestselling author H. W. Brands, a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history.

Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands's sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right. He was a beloved commander in the field but willing to make the troop sacrifices necessary to win the war, even in the face of storms of criticism. He worked valiantly to protect the rights of freedmen in the South; Brands calls him the last presidential defender of black civil rights for nearly a century. He played it straight with the American Indians, allowing them to shape their own fate even as the realities of Manifest Destiny meant the end of their way of life. He was an enormously popular president whose memoirs were a huge bestseller; yet within decades of his death his reputation was in tatters, the victim of Southerners who resented his policies on Reconstruction. In this page-turning biography, Brands now reconsiders Grant's legacy and provides a compelling and intimate portrait of a man who saved the Union on the battlefield and consolidated that victory as a resolute and principled political leader.

Grant’s biographers tend to focus on different parts of his life. So while Ronald White did a deep dive into Grant’s childhood, Brands give it only a passing glance. Only once Grant enters West Point does the story bring his life into focus.

The Mexican-American War, it Grant’s first wartime experience. While he would excel as a soldier, Grant was never in favor of the invasion. In later years he would write that he doubted America’s policy toward Mexico from the moment of the annexation of Texas, and that the war which resulted was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation.”

This sort of moral compass would chart his course through the Civil War and his two terms as president. Time has erased his efforts during Reconstruction and his policies regarding the indigenous population. A nation that once revered him as “the man who saved the union,” has effectively forgotten him and the righteous path he tried to lead the nation through, instead making heroes out of the men who tried to destroy it.