Category: Blog

Ron Chernow, Grant (New York: Penguin, 2017), 1074 pages including bibliography, an index, and 16 pages of black and white photos.

U. S. Grant is an amazing story. Even how he came upon his name (which was latter joked to be Unconditional Surrender Grant) is an interesting story. At the dawn of the Civil War, Grant was broke, having failed in several business attempts. He had been dismissed from the army due to his drinking problems. Eight years later, after having led the Union forces to victory, Grant is the President of the United States. In this massive biography, Ron Chernow tells Grant’s story. Chernow challenges many of the presuppositions that are often held about Grant such as his military achievement was due to his superior numbers and that he, like his presidency, was corrupt. While acknowledging the truth of the Union superiority in numbers and the corruption of his administration, Chernow believes that Grant was a superior officer and he, himself, wasn’t corrupt. Grant’s greatest fault, according to Chernow, was his loyalty to friends. It appears Grant best action and clearest head was in the chaos of battle. In his private life he often overlooked the faults of his friends and was too trusting. In battle, he had no problems removing ineffective commanders.

 

Grant is certainly a study in complexity. His father was overbearing, a successful businessman, and a strong abolitionist. His wife, Julia, came from a Southern Planter family and his father-in-law remained an unrepentant Southern even as he lived in the White House during Grant’s presidency. The two families hated each other. His father, who was critical of his son’s failures before the war, was proud of his son during the war even while he attempted to use his son for economic gain. His father, in business with two Jewish merchants, sought to benefit from Grant’s position in the western theater in order to acquire cotton. Grant became so mad that he banned all Jewish merchants from the army’s camp (a ban that was later rescinded). Grant would have to deal with embarrassments from his family for much of his life.

 

Grant was a graduate of West Point and served in the Mexican War (and later admitted that he felt the war was unjust). After the war, he served in California and Washington Territory, before coming back East as a civilian. At the beginning of the Civil War, he volunteered as an officer and joined in Ohio.

 

Grant rose to prominence following his wins in the Western theater of the campaign (where he became close to Sherman), he didn’t meet Lincoln until he was being made the General of the Army. In this position, Grant was able to coordinate the movements of all the armies of the North with a goal of not defeating the South on the battlefield, but of defeating the Confederacy. While much of the war had been fought with armies working independently, Grant, in 1864, coordinated the attacks on all fronts, a strategy that kept the South from shuffling troops from one front to the other and led to the end of the war.

 

Grant knew many within the leadership of the Confederacy. He had been a good friend of James Longstreet since their time at West Point and after the war, the two continued their friendship. He had met Lee in Mexico, but unlike other Union generals wasn’t intimated by him. Grant’s strategy was to always keep pushing. Even if he lost a battle, he would quickly regroup and attack again, before his enemy was able to rebuild his troops. Often, in battles such as Shiloh, the first day was lost but because of continuing the attack instead of withdrawing from the field, victory (or at least reaching objectives, which he saw as more important) were achieved on the second day. During the war, Grant despised the guerrilla tactics of John Singleton Mosby, but after the war he, too, became friend and supporter. Mosby would later become the United States ambassador to Thailand. Grant and Lee had only one additional meeting after the war. Lee called on Grant about a railroad project and didn’t laugh when Grant suggested the two of them had done enough destroying of railroads for them to become builders. While Grant wasn’t intimidated by Lee, neither is Chernow, who challenges a lot of presumptions held about the Southern General.

 

I found many interesting insights into this book. One was how Lincoln feared that Grant might decide to run for the presidency in 1864, something Grant denied. In many ways, he was a humble man. But he was married to a former Southern Belle, who delighted in the spotlight. I was also amazed that after Hayes’ presidency, who had announced early on that he would only serve one term, Grant considered (and other pushed him) to return to the White House. But his attempt at a comeback failed when the Republicans chose Garfield.

 

While Grant’s presidency had its corruption, which Chernow deals with, I felt he tended to sweep allegations of Grant being beholding to business leaders (many of whom had given him homes and money) under the table. Chernow paints a picture of the President who was concerned about Reconstruction and the danger of losing that which so many men had given their lives. He was very concern about the way the “old south” was rising through the Ku Klux Klan. As a General, Grant found that black soldiers were just as good as white soldiers. It bothered him when he learned of former black soldiers being lynched in the South, yet he was also concerned about overusing force. Interestingly, Sherman, who was seen as less generous than Grant as he swept across Georgia and South Carolina during the war, took the side of the South after the war. Sherman suggested leaving states to work out their own laws. Grant knew that such a tactic would end up with a South in which African-Americans would be no better off than before the war and saw the government had a role to play in reducing violence.

 

It was interesting to learn how Grant had his eyes on the United States acquiring Santa Domingo (today’s the Dominican Republic). He was also ready to go to war with Mexico, if necessary, to force the French out. Others in his cabinet had eyes on Cuba and it was even suggested that Great Britain give the United States Canada as payment from the damages of the British built Confederate ship, Alabama.

 

After his second term, Grant became the first American president to make a round-the-world trip. It started out as a rest in Europe, but ended up being a diplomatic mission as Grant visited Egypt, India, Thailand, China and Japan. Coming back to the United States, Grant saw what financial security he had to evaporate overnight in a Ponzi scheme. Friends stepped in which allowed him to have a house in which to live. Mark Twain, who had befriended Grant, worked with him to write a biography. Grant, suffering from throat cancer, finished the book right before his death. Twain, who published the book, was able to present Julia with the books royalties of nearly half a million dollars, making it one of the most successful books of the 19th Century.

 

Chernow deals with Grant’s drinking, suggesting that during the war he generally refrained from drinking in front of his troops (his drunken accounts were when he was away from the front). Grant had aides and a wife who worked hard to keep him from drinking. It appears Grant was mainly a binge drinker. As long as he avoided alcohol, he was okay, but once he started drinking he continued until he was extremely drunk.

 

This is a well-researched study. Some may suggest that Chernow, in challenging many of the Grant myths, is playing in revisionist history. But it’s important to remember that many of the Grant myths that rose in the 19th Century at a time when the United States wanted to move beyond reconstruction. At this time, revisionist histories such as the “Lost Cause” movement became popular and united “white” America behind myths such as benevolent masters and the states’ rights.

 

If you have time, I recommend this book. I listened to this book on audible (48 hours long—that’s a lot of time in the gym), but also read sections of the book at the same time.

Billy Beasley, The Preacher’s Letter. (Little Elm, TX: eLectio Publishing, 2018), 265 pages

 

Troy Dawkins is a middle aged kid trying to figure out life. He lives a solidarity life with his dog, Max, working as a bouncer at a bar in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. He’s a man with secrets in his past, who keeps most people an arm’s length away. At the insistence of his mother, he attends church one Sunday where he hears the new minister give a message that he finds disturbing and lacking of grace. While many in the congregation love their new pastor, Troy suspects something is wrong. Writing to the new minister, he receives a reply that is so upsetting to Troy that he barges in to his office and confronts the minister to his face. By the end of the book, the minister is knocked off his pedestal and Troy has a new love interest. And it’s Christmas.

 

While my short summary of the book may sound corny, as if it could be a script for a Hallmark Christmas movie, Billy Beasley is a talented storyteller. As the story unfolds, we learn more about Troy’s past and how a freak college injury kept him from playing professional baseball. And also we learn about a woman he once loved and the tragedy around her death. We also learn about the angels who look over Troy: David, from a former pastor, and Mabry, his college English professor who owns, with her husband, the bar where Troy works. Tory also befriends Suzanne (or she befriends him), who is the wife of the minister, and Stacey, a rising star in the world of Christian music. Billy weaves everyone’s story into the book, along with some real life places on Carolina Beach such as Britts Donuts (if you ever had one of their donuts, you’ll never forget it) and Snows Cut Bridge. The story is filled with wonderful descriptions of coastal North Carolina.

 

My main critique of Billy’s story is that the two main characters are presented as good and evil. The preacher, Alan Matthews, appears one-dimensional. He’s almost Puritanical in his lifestyle, although we learn late in the book that things are not always as they seem. Alan has an over-sized ego that craves the spotlight. He wants to be seen as right. He likes his high salary. We get a hint that Matthews wasn’t always this way, from conversations he has with his wife, but at the time this story occurs, he appears to be uncaring and sinister. Standing opposite to the minister is Troy. While there are more dimensions to his character, he comes across as almost always doing the right thing. He mostly responds in a manner that is well thought out and considerate of others, traits that serve him well as a bouncer. While Troy is a likable character, few people are so good nor are few as sinister as Alan. Most of us live our lives somewhere between the two extremes.

 

This work of fiction addresses the trough question of what the church is to be about. Matthew’s puritanical views on sex and alcohol are contrasted with those of the former pastor, David, who lifts up a vision of a loving community caring for people. Readers who have suffered from the hands of churches that seem more concerned on behavior and appearances instead of loving and accepting people will find much hope in this book. Of course, on the opposite end, those who argue for the church to maintain strict purity standards may find their position challenged.

As a disclaimer, I have known Billy Beasley since the fourth grade. This is his second book and I have enjoyed both of them.

Olivia Laing, To the River (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011), 281 pages, a few black and white photos.

 

The first sentence of this book, “I am haunted by waters,” jumped out at me. I’d read it before. It’s the ending line of Norman MacLean’s novella A River Runs through It. I was shocked that she doesn’t list MacLean in her bibliography even though in a later chapter she links him with Hemingway with “swift trout.” (55). Even if she hasn’t read the book, she’s probably seen the movie. It took me a while to get over this neglect (or was she snubbing) of an American author. A second problem I had getting into this book is that I expected her to be traveling through York. After a while I googled and learned that Laing’s river is one of a number of rivers in Great Britain named Ouse. My lack of knowledge of British geography led to this confusion.

 

Laing sets out to walk the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex. It’s not a long river and in a roughly a week’s time she covers the river that has been altered extensively in history. The one black and white photo of the river in the book looks like an irrigation canal in the American West. Over time, the river has been straightened. Its outlet has also been altered as Britain’s, for centuries, tried to create a usable harbor at its mouth. Silting and the longshore current quickly blocked such harbors. However, this altered river has played a major role in English history. Under her waters, Virginia Woolf drown herself by pocketing stones in her dress to pull her under.  In the 13th Century, the Battle of Lewes was fought along its banks. At one time, it was thought to be a location of a fossil providing scientists a link in human evolution, but eventually the “find” was proved a forgery.

 

Laing walks the banks of the river, staying in old homes and lodges near its bank, musing about history and development, nature and literature, religion and archeology. Laing’s writings displays a depth of knowledge as she not only has an understanding of a battle in the 1200s, but expresses a horror that the bones of many of those who were buried in mass graves ended up in the fill used by those constructing railroads in the 1800s. She introduces her readers to authors such as John Bayley and his wife Iris Murdoch, who both swam in this river. Bayley wrote about his wife’s Alzheimer’s, which allows Laing to explore the role of memory. She’s been doing throughout her walk as she explores the “ghost” along the river. She does not limit her discussion of memory to humans as she also explores how sea trout move up fresh water rivers to spawn. Another author she explores Kenneth Grahame, allows her to explore the role of grief following the author’s son, who like Virginia Woolf, also committed suicide. In addition to modern authors, she also ties in stories of Greek gods along with older British author’s such as the Bebe and the author of the ancient Domesday Book, published shortly after the Norman Invasion. As she weaves other stories into her own, Virginia and Leonard Woolf are always a close by as a common thread that ties everything together.

 

The deeper I read into this book, the more I enjoyed Laing’s key insights into the world in which she was traveling. She glimpses birds and animals, observes the changing of the weather, and watches other people as she makes her way along the path. She also brings in her own history and relationships into the story. The Ouse, she confesses on the first page, is a river that she has returned to many times. Her historical understanding of all that has happened along the Ouse is refreshing and made me want to keep going. For a river that I knew nothing about, I am glad to have taken this journey and recommend it for others.

Scott Stillman, Wilderness: The Gateway to the Soul (Boulder, CO: Wild Soul Press, 2018), 198 pages.

I really wanted to like this book. I thought I would enjoy it. After all, like Stillman, I have done many wilderness trips, both overland and on water. I’ve solo backpacked, off-trail and cross-country, in some of the same areas in which he explores in his book. Wilderness is a collection of accounts of Stillman’s mountain, desert and backwoods trips across the American West. Sadly, I found many of his stories to be flat. Too many lacked suspense and a plot line. To me, Stillman’s book reads like my journals (in which I scribble and make notes of my experiences, and like him occasional composing a line or two of poetry). But I don’t share my journals, I save them and later will distill from them what will go into a story. Instead of his journals serving as the source of ideas, it appears Stillman is offering up slightly edited journal entries.

 

My favorite story in this book was in the second chapter (Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, Arizona). The author is hiking through the Arizona desert, from Cottonwood to Sedona. In this story, I could feel the suspense and even some thirst as he struggled to find water. I would have liked to have felt such thirst (or sore muscles or fear) in all the stories. The wilderness can be a place many of us go to find healing, but we must also realize that it’s a dangerous place. Only when we are willing to take the risk can we experience the transformation that such places offers.

 

It appears to me that Stillman has some good ideas about the role of wilderness (many of which I share). But instead of developing the idea from the experiences contained within a story, these ideas are dropped in as a “truth.” Instead of the allowing the reader to gain from the struggles and the joy of being in the wild, coming to their own conclusions as we experience through words his experiences, Stillman tells us what to think. These are all solid ideas that I have held, such as it doesn’t take a lot of

 

In my opinion, Stillman also overuses lists (this is the second recent book I’ve reviewed and made this observation). He will drop a series of one word descriptions describing the weather, what he’s seeing, among other things. While occasionally a list can be a beneficial technique for emphasis, I felt many of these lists could be woven into the story and used as a way to draw the reader into his encounter within the wild. Stillman appears to strive for a minimalist style of writing (as in his hiking) by using short sentences and even many one-word sentences (which create a list).

 

Stillman has done a wonderful job advertising his self-published book. Using his incredible talents as a photographer, with a clever line or two from the book, I was sucked in. It’s too bad that Stillman didn’t publish a book of photographs with one or two line reflections. Such a book, while expensive to produce, would be a thing of beauty. There are no photos in this book except for those on the cover. In his advertisement copy, there is a quote comparing Stillman to Edward Abbey. While it is no doubt that Stillman, like Abbey, loves the wilderness and wants to protect it, his writings lack Abbey’s wit and “reverent irreverence.” Abbey always presented himself as a bit of a contraction (driving old gas guzzling cars and tossing beer cans out onto the desert floor while fighting against those threatening the environment). Stillman appears to have everything worked out neatly in his head, even before he has such experiences. His trips into the wilderness only confirms his beliefs.

 

I recommend everyone to find a way to appreciate the grandeur of the world in which we live. Such experiences help us understand ourselves better. But I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book. Hopefully, the author will follow his hero, Edward Abbey, and continue to hone his craft. Abbey’s first book, Jonathan Troy, was not very well received, but when his second book, The Brave Cowboy came out, he had found his voice. The West is a complex place (which may be why I’ve yet to write about it outside of a few academic and historical pieces). To understand the West as a place which can help us to understand ourselves better requires so many different levels of thought: human and natural history, geology, hydrology, weather, botany, forestry, animal science, industrial development, economics, among other studies.