Based on seven years of research with primary documents some of them never examined by previous Grant scholarsthis is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leadera willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential partner. Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the governments policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for personal courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs.

Part I. Formation 1630-1848 -- "My family is American" -- "My Ulysses" -- West Point -- "Dear Julia" -- "By treaty or the sword" -- "Army of invasion" -- Part II. Trial 1848-1861 -- Panama -- "Forsaken" -- "Hardscrabble" -- Galena -- Part II. Transformation 1861-1865 -- "I am in to do all I can" -- Belmont -- "Unconditional surrender" -- Shiloh -- William Tecumseh Sherman -- "More than forty Richmonds" -- Vicksburg -- Chattanooga -- "Washington's legitimate successor" -- "Battle of the Wilderness" -- Robert E. Lee -- Petersburg -- Appomattox -- Part IV. Reconstruction 1865-1868 -- "I will keep my word" -- "More & more radical" -- "Let us have peace" -- Part V. President 1869-1877 -- "Gold panic" -- "A radical change in Indian policy" -- "Foreign relations" -- Ku Klux Klan -- "The Gilded Age" -- "Malfeasance!" -- Centennial crisis -- Part VI. World citizen 1879-1885 -- American ambassador abroad -- Grant & Ward -- Final campaign -- Epilogue.