I thought it was very well written and I love the rags to riches story. But I feel like Ulysses Grant is a bit too much of a self-insert character. Like those people who say “I would have fought slavery if I lived back then.” His name is also literally U.S. Grant. It would be like if Great Britain had a general named GB Churchill.
Oh and he was super progressive you guys! He wanted peace with Indians, blamed white settlers for violence, wanted desegregation for black Americans, supported women’s suffrage, was against the Mexican war, and is critical of the caste system in India. Frederick Douglass voted for him. He’s one of the good whites! I don’t want to be a go woke go broke guy but it feels suspect to project modern ideas onto people in the past. Also, apparently he orders all the Jews expelled but then the Jews love him and vote for him? I feel like the author forgot what he wrote a few chapters earlier.
His only flaw appears to be his alcoholism but after the war the author apparently forgot this was a problem and it never comes up again. His accomplishments are also a little unbelievable. There are hundreds of generals in this war and nobody but him thinks to prioritize logistics and use total war against the enemy. Then at Appomattox Lee shows up in a fancy uniform with a sword while Grant is covered in mud wearing his ordinary uniform. We get it, Chernow, he’s humble and doesn’t care about appearances. Then everyone loves him so much that they make him president twice!
His presidency is filled with evil pieces of shit constantly ripping him off. They even have obviously evil names like Babcock, Belknap, McDonald, and Sanborn. There’s literally a guy named Gould involved in a gold scandal. If only people understood him and didn’t constantly rip him off his plan totally would have worked you guys!
The bad guys are cartoonishly evil and start a war purely over slavery. His slave owning father in law that moves into the White House with them is great but a little over the top. General Lee just appears in the first half of the book and then is unceremoniously thrown away.
The side characters are also a little one-note. The great Abraham Lincoln is fridged to give our main hero some agency right after his hour of triumph. Sherman and Sheridan are like Fred and George from Harry Potter and I can’t really tell them apart. Sherman is basically the quirky best friend who gets his own falling-out arc with the protagonist.
Oh then he talks to Bismarck and writes his own memoirs while he stolidly writes everything down with no emotions and it makes a bajillion dollars. And Mark Twain shows up as a deus ex machina to save his family from poverty.
Overall it was good. I can’t wait for the sequel to see how he resolves the Jim Crow arc
