Ulysses S. Grant enters American life as a contradiction that grows truer the closer one looks: shy but unflinching, ordinary in bearing yet relentless in execution, a man who disliked blood and became the general who ended the bloodiest American war, a president whose name is still dragged through the mud of scandals and still stands under the clean architecture of civil rights written into law and enforced by federal will. He begins as Hiram Ulysses in Ohio, the son of a tannery owner whose vats taught a boy the smell of hides cured with acid and labor. The family moves to Georgetown, and the boy learns horses as if he were learning a language—balance, patience, the quiet command that persuades a nervous animal to lower its head. When a local congressman obtains an appointment to West Point, a clerical error prints “Ulysses S.” on the papers; t ...