The Ron Chernow biography

There is usually some considerable delay between finishing a book and seeing it in print, unless you are either a well known writer or someone paying to get it published. Neither condition applies to me and my new novel about the end of Grant's life.

So I did not, in writing the book, get the benefit of reading Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant which was published last year. Having now read it, I was pleased to see Chernow sharing some of my own views, e.g. acknowledging the significance of Grant's drinking problem (which some of his defenders refuse to admit). I was also pleased to see him portrayed as a standard, not particularly devout Methodist, rather than the agnostic or even atheist which some of his modern admirers purport to see. And Chernow made me understand why Grant felt betrayed by Elihu Washburne in 1880.

I differ from Chernow's apparent view that Grant was an artistic Philistine, and wish he had written more about the president's efforts to avoid war with the American Indians and with Spain over Cuba.

As for the last months of Grant's life, the focus of my book, I detected one error in Chernow's (page 952), in which "a lock of Jesse's hair" was actually Buck's (i.e. Jesse's older brother).

All in all, it's a good entry in what is turning into a golden age of Grant biographies. But if Lin-Manuel Miranda is looking to write another musical based on American history, I reckon this time the book he needs is not Chernow's but mine.