Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant Book

I read this because of a review. The reviewer wrote that they had read this book to their Father while in was in hospital. The image of that situation struck me. What with one thing and another it was the kind of thing I could imagine doing myself, although as it happened the only book I ended up reading to my father in hospital was The Cruel Sea, Grant's Memoirs will always be appropriate as a choice of end of life reading since they were written as he was dying of throat cancer.

The use of language is very direct and precise, there's a clear sense of narrative direction. The earliest recollection of his West Point years and service during the Mexico War link into the Civil War story. It was of course written partly in reaction to the mass of memoirs written, particularly by former Southern Generals, as a continuation of the war by literary means (partly to provide money for his family who had been ruined by the financial speculation and adventures of his son). In common with those memoirs it is fighting a war on two fronts. Against the former enemy and against the former rivals. Grant was dying of cancer and the memoir was dictated to a stenographer until the constrictions of his throat made this impossible. But it remains clear and precise.

The meaning of the book to me is in the acceptance of responsibility entails the active search for achievable objectives and the articulation of those objectives in the form of a plan. This imparts the text with direction and clarity. There's a sense that in order to control that particular complex situation acting was better than reacting.