Will I love Grant Takes Command?

Bruce Catton wrote extensively about the noble but ill-starred Army of the Potomac and is widely known for his wonderful trilogy recounting that army’s path through the American Civil War. With Grant Takes Command, Catton looks west for a time toward General Ulysses S. Grant and how he came east to lead all the Union armies toward eventual victory. Recounting Grant’s (and the country’s) journey from the opening of the cracker line in Chattanooga in 1863, through the Battle of the Wilderness (a subject that captured my imagination!) and the Overland Campaign and on to Appomattox Courthouse and the… show more.

I found this non-fiction book a fascinating study, not only in purely military terms but in a classic rags-to-riches example that so exemplifies America at its very finest. The book concerns a man who had experienced only limited success in his early life, and who then emerges from that relative obscurity in the opening months of the Civil War to become the Union commander who defeats the fabled Confederate General Robert E. Lee. He then accepts Lee’s surrender at Appomattox with an offer of generous terms to help reunite the nation. Pulitzer Prize winning author Bruce Catton provides a detailed… show more.