To Rescue the Republic- Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876 by Bret Baier
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Web ID: 16777975Grant's life as told to Your Weekly Reader
Oh my. This is a nice book for a middle school student with an emerging interest in Grant, the Civil War, or Reconstruction. It is not, however, a book of any great substance or inquiry, nor is it any fun to read, nor rewarding to those who undertake the chore. The prose is sterile, the focus relentlessly on what happened and how--only very rarely on why. Essentially, it's the Spark Notes version of Ron Chernow's brilliant biography, but without the analysis squibs that you'll find in every Notes. Decent airplane reading--if the in-flight wifi is out, anyway--but, goodness, what a sorry piece of popular history. Marred by a number of conspicuous errors, including a particularly outlandish report that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo added 500 square miles to the US. (In fact, it added roughly 525 THOUSAND square miles to the US.)
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