List Price

$32.50

Textbook Details

  • ISBN:
    0807833177
  • ISBN-13:
    9780807833179
  • PUB. DATE:
    November 2009
  • PUBLISHER:
    University of North Carolina Press, The
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U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth by Joan Waugh

$32.50 List Price
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Customer Reviews

Good Bookby TonyObringer

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I enjoyed this book very much. It is amazing how such a popular figure during his life is now regarded with much disdain. I found the book very thought provoking and I now have a new appreciation for Grant.

Overview -

U. S. Grant

Product Details

  • Pub. Date: November 2009
  • Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, The
  • Sales Rank: 298,967

Synopsis


At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings.

In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history, Joan Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of American history. She captures a sense of what led nineteenth-century Americans to overlook Grant's obvious faults and hold him up as a critically important symbol of national reconciliation and unity. Waugh further shows that Grant's reputation and place in public memory closely parallel the rise and fall of the northern version of the Civil War story — in which the United States was the clear, morally superior victor and Grant was the emblem of that victory. After the failure of Reconstruction, the dominant Union myths about the war gave way to a southern version that emphasized a more sentimental remembrance of the honor and courage of both sides and ennobled the "Lost Cause." By the 1920s, Grant's reputation had plummeted.

Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the Civil War itself.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

…we have the question that stands at the heart of Waugh's exceptionally thoughtful and valuable book: "Why did Grant's star shine so brightly for Americans of his own day, and why has it been eclipsed so completely for Americans since at least the mid-twentieth century?" Though there can be no final, definitive answer to either part of the question, Waugh…provides intelligent, plausible suggestions. Not merely that, but at a time when too many professional historians employ unintelligible academic jargon, she writes clear prose that is readily accessible to the serious general reader.

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Biography


Joan Waugh is professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is the author or coeditor of three books, includingWars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War (UNC Press).