Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

The best memoir any American president has left, written by a dying man against the clock to clear his family's debts. Grant tells the work of saving the Union in prose that is plain, exact, and free of self-pity, and Twain published it. The contrast with the bloodshed it describes is part of its power: a great general writing about the worst war in the country's history without a wasted word. Proof that the man who held the republic together could also account for it honestly.

The general who won the Civil War and the President who tried to defend Reconstruction, who at the end of his life, broke and dying, wrote the finest memoir any American president has left. He finished it days before his death to clear his family's debts, and Twain published it. The prose is plain, exact, and unsentimental about the work of saving the Union. It is the rare great book written against the clock by a man with nothing left to prove and everything to settle.