“In Venice, Grant let slip a remark that would provide fodder for many satirists: he told a young woman what a fine city it would be if only the canals were drained. Henry Adams adduced this as damning evidence of… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“Had Napoleon been thoroughly unselfish, Grant suggested, he would have been the greatest man in history, such was his military genius. When a young woman on board asked Grant to name the two figures he detested most in history, he… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“In other words, Julia still believed in the beneficial effects of tobacco long after her husband had likely died from it. Even grimacing with… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“Right before his inauguration, he received a Quaker delegation and asked them to nominate Indian agents from their members. “If you can make Quakers out of the Indians, it will take the fight out of them,” Grant told them. “Let us have peace.”15 Aside from his respect for Quaker pacifism and integrity, Grant knew the society had coexisted peacefully with… — Ron Chernow Copy Share
“Grant roomed with Fred Dent, who also singled out Grant as “the clearest headed young man I ever saw . . . He always wanted to do… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“Hamilton has often been extolled as the exponent of a rational foreign policy based on cool calculations of national self-interest. But his April 14… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“While the folks at home embraced him as an improbable hero, Washington was denigrated in England as a reckless young warrior and in France… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“the immorality of slavery became patently clear that spring. He had acquired from Colonel Dent the mulatto slave named William Jones who had worked… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“As his life steadily unraveled, he pawned his gold watch and chain for $20 on December 23, 1857, to purchase Christmas presents for his… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“Grant had overwhelmingly won the electoral vote, and had garnered the largest popular majority of the century, nearly 56 percent of the vote, the… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“The chief quartermaster on the West Coast, Robert Allen, an old friend of Grant’s, learned he was holed up in a cheap miner’s hotel… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“Returning to his Manhattan town house on Christmas Eve, Grant, sixty-one, pivoted to hand the driver a holiday tip when he slipped on the… — Ron Chernow Copy Share Image
“When he bet Julia that she wouldn’t dare to descend into the mine, located seventeen hundred feet below, it roused her fighting spirit and she proved him wrong. Grant surfaced from the deep mine, red-faced and perspiring, and joked that it was a good place “to leave the newspapermen.” “Would you not leave the politicians, too?” asked John H. Kinkead,… — Ron Chernow Copy Share
