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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nGrant <\/b>by Ron Chernow, Penguin Press, 1,104 pages, $40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acclaimed with prizes including the Pulitzer, the author dedicates his new biography<\/a> \u201cto my loyal readers, who have soldiered on through my lengthy sagas.\u201d This one, about the nation\u2019s 18th commander in chief, falls in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With only 95 fewer pages than the Library of America edition of Grant\u2019s own, originally two-volume \u201cPersonal Memoirs,\u201d \u201cGrant\u201d weighs more than 4 pounds. Finishers merit a badge of courage labeled \u201cread.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Descriptions of secondary players (a cabinet member is \u201ca tall, slim man with a balding pate, eyebrows that jutted over deep-set eyes, and a pencil-thin mustache\u201d) are expendable. Given a first chapter called \u201cCountry Bumpkin,\u201d subsequent reminders of Grant\u2019s humble beginnings are tiresome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the frequent mentions of his proclivity for alcoholic binges could drive you to drink. The conclusion: In the end, \u201call available evidence suggests Grant had abstained from alcohol … through sheer willpower and perseverance \u2014 his stock in trade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But overall the book is worth its weight in bold evidence of Grant\u2019s loyalty to a Union in which men are created equal. On the other side, Gen. Robert E. Lee\u2019s action belies \u201cthe notion that Lee fought simply from loyalty\u201d to Virginia and \u201cbetokens a more militant attachment to Confederate ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under Chernow\u2019s command, Grant is a leader with a conscience and \u201ca soldier in his marrow.\u201d In Mexico in 1846 he is \u201ctranquil in warfare, as if temporarily anesthetized, preternaturally cool under fire\u201d in his first fight. With a \u201cvisceral instinct for fighting\u201d he becomes \u201ca master of the psychology of war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving from general to president, he realizes \u201cone big thing: His main mission was to settle unfinished business from the war by preserving the Union and safeguarding the freed slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither task is easy. There is a \u201cbroadly based retreat from many of the ideals that had motivated the northern war effort\u201d including terrorism against black people, and the novice president who is \u201caccustomed to the automatic obedience of huge armies\u201d must \u201cbrook the vagaries of petty politics and wayward personalities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grant perseveres despite a constant cigar (\u201can ultimately fatal addiction\u201d) and lifelong financial losses. He is gullible, a man who \u201ccould recognize evil in his enemies but not in those who posed as his friends.\u201d The Brooklyn Bridge was finished two years before Grant died in 1885, and you wonder if anybody tried to sucker him into buying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His friends \u2014 not posers \u2014 include Frederick Douglass, Andrew Carnegie, who sends 63 roses when Grant reaches 63, and Mark Twain, who publishes the memoirs that preserve the Grant family\u2019s fiscal status and the president\u2019s reputation for brilliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides cementing Grant\u2019s stature, the book is a reminder that Chernow\u2019s \u201cAlexander Hamilton\u201d is the inspiration for Broadway\u2019s box-office phenomenon, the musical \u201cHamilton.\u201d Imagine \u201cMake the U.S. Grant Again\u201d on a marquee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Year of War: Two Brothers, Vietnam, and a Nation Divided<\/b> by Daniel P. Bolger, 336 pages, Da Capo, $28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hagel brothers \u2014 the older, Chuck, later is a senator and then a secretary of defense \u2014 are the subjects but the war is collectively America\u2019s, yours and mine and \u201cours,\u201d in Vietnam or back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book<\/a> is an attempt \u201cto explain the significance of the tumultuous events of the Vietnam War and 1960s America.\u201d The author of \u201cWhy We Lost<\/a>\u201d in Afghanistan (he was there) fulfills his mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two soldiers are Tom and Chuck, serving and suffering in the same platoon. One is for the war, one is against it, and both fight in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one three-week period, the sons and grandsons of veterans of two world wars share four Purple Hearts. Their tour amounts to \u201ca lifetime of combat: Tet, patrols, ambushes, roadrunner ops, calling in artillery, arranging medevacs, twice wounded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could quibble occasionally. Does a reader need six pages about George Wallace\u2019s presidential campaign? And picture this: At a press conference featuring Gen. William Westmoreland, camera bulbs are \u201cbrilliantly white,\u201d \u201cdazzling,\u201d \u201cintense\u201d, \u201cluminous,\u201d \u201cintense\u201d again, and full of \u201cvibrant luminosity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, most of the time the siblings\u2019 story, a part of the American fabric that Bolger weaves deftly, sucks you in. Savor this, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo there it was. A superpower at war, a half million men in country, the famous 9th Infantry Division charging hither and yon applying … patented \u2018excruciating pressure\u2019 to the enemy, and it came to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cForty-odd smoked, scared infantrymen counted on a 19-year-old and a 20-year-old \u2014 both bloodied up, neither in the army an entire year yet \u2014 to get them to safety. The U.S. Army put itself in this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the assessment of a retired Army general whose experience \u2014 including Iraq \u2014 adds meaningful punch. Bolger\u2019s is \u201can infantryman\u2019s account of two infantry sergeants,\u201d and \u201cthere\u2019s a broader story told because there\u2019s always more to war than fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pentagon\u2019s Wars: The Military\u2019s Undeclared War Against America\u2019s Presidents <\/b>by Mark Perry, Basic, 368 pages, $30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t be misled by the subtitle and begin to feel sorry for commanders in chief. They know how to fight, also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides, most of the squabbles in this \u201cnarrative account of the politics of war\u201d are among friends \u2014 or so they think \u2014 in the Defense Department. Nobody at the Pentagon needs to cross the Potomac to have a spat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The historian\u2019s 1989 \u201cFour Stars<\/a>\u201d looks at senior commanders and their civilian counterparts from World War II through the Cold War, and this book<\/a> takes readers through the end of Obama\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one corner? The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which must count the beans even during wartime. In 2006, Iraq strategy \u201cfed into JCS worries that the war was cutting into military readiness. Building and maintaining the military was in the JCS\u2019 interest; fighting a war undermined that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paragraph\u2019s citation credits a \u201csenior Joint Chief officer.\u201d Another cites \u201ca senior Pentagon official,\u201d and another a \u201csenior U.S. Marine Corps officer.\u201d If only those footnote soldiers would give their names, especially the one who says then-Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis feels \u201che needed to parade his masculinity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meow. Some readers will consider such a catfight as blasphemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the sources \u2014 many are on the record \u2014 the highly readable book is a DoD version of TV\u2019s \u201cDynasty,\u201d so full of dirt you want to drain the pentagonal swamp:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The examples are fun \u2014 until you remember that the stakes are serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 28 years \u201cno single senior military officer of any service has ever told a president \u2018no\u2019 \u2014 or even \u2018yes sir, but.\u2019 Except for one: Colin Powell told Bill Clinton \u2018no\u2019 \u2014 and that was on the issue of gays in the military, hardly as momentous as sending men and women to their deaths.\u201d (More than a few readers might tell Perry that the two points are not exclusive.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II <\/b>by Liza Mundy, Hachette, 432 pages, $28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women who helped bring victory achieve visibility, at last, in this history<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everybody knows about Rosie the Riveter, says the author, a former Washington Post reporter. But \u201cfar less well known is that more than 10,000 women traveled to Washington, D.C., to lend their minds and their hard-won educations to the war effort\u201d \u2014 all at a time when \u201cthere was really only one job consistently available\u201d to an educated female: schoolteacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And being recruited to work secretly for 12 hours a day was not a feather on a woman\u2019s hat. \u201cThat women were considered better suited for code-breaking work … wasn\u2019t a compliment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the contrary. What this meant was that women were considered better equipped for boring work that required close attention to detail rather than leaps of genius.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet some achieve recognition at the Army and Navy\u2019s separate decoding shops, competitive \u201cto a degree that would have been comic if it weren\u2019t taking place in the middle of a war.\u201d By 1945, 7,000 of the Army\u2019s 8,000 code breakers are female, as are 4,000 of the Navy\u2019s 5,000 in Washington. Their interpreting of messages from Germany and Japan makes a difference from Normandy to Midway Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs the Japanese coped with their changing (Pacific) island situation, the ex-schoolteachers had to cope with Japanese cryptanalytic changes\u201d to the tune of 30,000 messages each month \u2014 a thousand a day \u2014 in 1944. The author maps out military coding in minutia that can be tedious, but she compensates by wisely relying mostly on the personal stories of the \u201cgirls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 96, Dot Braden is finally able to tell her family what she did during the war. Ann Caracristi, the \u201cpeerless secret-keeper in every way\u201d who becomes a deputy director at the National Security Agency, is buried beside her \u201clongtime companion\u201d \u2014 who also came to the capital in 1943.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Withdrawal: Reassessing America\u2019s Final Years in Vietnam <\/b>by Gregory A. Daddis, Oxford, 320 pages, $30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The history professor, author and West Point graduate challenges some of \u201cthe more popular preconceptions held on the American experience in Vietnam,\u201d what he calls \u201ca miscarried\u201d war, a \u201ccostly military stalemate.\u201d His is a worthwhile \u201cnew perspective<\/a> for those looking back to history for wisdom in managing current and future conflicts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran resists blatant comparisons of those two wars with Vietnam \u2014 although he suggests that in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey \u201ccould conveniently play the role of William Westmoreland with David Petraeus performing as the new [Creighton] Abrams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abrams has top billing, and his \u201csignal accomplishment was to alter, if only temporarily and reluctantly, the U.S. military culture from one captivated by visions of traditional battlefield \u2018victory\u2019 to one accepting the obligations of a political alternative in Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everybody\u2019s vision is blurred. \u201cIn the eyes of many American soldiers, the South Vietnamese acted more like dim understudies than true partners.\u201d And the South fails to supply \u201ca political education that might have committed its soldiers ideologically to the Saigon government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1969, President Nixon \u201cenvisioned Vietnamization as a policy of withdrawal rather than a strategy for victory. In the end, \u201cno amount of American military muscle … could resolve the fundamental issue of whether South Vietnam was a viable nation capable of effective governance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus <\/b>by Ellen Moore, Duke, 280 pages, $26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Born \u201con a U.S. military base to an Army captain father and a pacifist mother,\u201d the author dedicates her study<\/a> to veterans, including \u201cthose committed to ending war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her dissertation is ethnologic, exploring how civilians and veterans interact on campus. She wants to \u201chelp people differentiate between support for veterans and support for the wars in which they fought.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After three years\u2019 immersion primarily at unidentified California schools \u2014 an \u201celite\u201d university and a community college \u2014 and interviews with at least 50 student veterans, what does she learn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8 Seconds of Courage: A Soldier\u2019s Story from Immigrant to the Medal of Honor <\/b>by Flo Groberg and Tom Sileo, Simon & Schuster, 208 pages, $25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eight seconds refers not to how long it takes to read the memoir<\/a> \u2014 although it is an easy task and the third effort by co-author Sileo, who brought similar, stick-to-what-happened, serviceable approaches to \u201cBrothers Forever\u201d and \u201cFire in My Eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, the measure is the time Groberg takes \u2014 on his first day as a captain \u2014 to confront a suicide bomber. His effort saves other soldiers\u2019 lives, although the Medal of Honor recipient wishes he had done more, and his last day in Afghanistan is a prelude to recovery that includes 32 surgeries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book illustrates how a French immigrant (his mother is Algerian) is full of American blood, and how a guy \u2014 whose first sentence admits his thinking about quitting Ranger School during the mountain phase \u2014 ends up doing the right thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice<\/b> by Khizr Khan, Random House, 288 pages, $27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Showing a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution was a Pakistan-born lawyer\u2019s last-minute amendment to his two-minute speech at last year\u2019s Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The moment put Khan, the son of a farmer, and his wife, a descendant of Afghanistan royalty, on the political map for his rhetorically asking GOP candidate Donald Trump whether he had read the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book <\/a>is as plain and simple as Khan\u2019s address and chronicles his leaving Pakistan for Dubai and eventually the U.S. To save money so he can send for family, Khan eats bread from a dumpster and sleeps in parks. But \u201cI never felt that we were giving anything up.\u201d Instead \u201cI focused on what we were gaining\u201d as citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, his Army captain son Humayun\u2019s death in Iraq brings an \u201cimmutable and eternal void.\u201d Yet \u201cwe can only be grateful for the 27 years we had with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book is more about dad than son, but the soldier\u2019s selflessness, even as a teenager, is touching \u2014 and represents American ideals worth emulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Proceeds from sales of the book go to the Capt. Humayun S. Khan Memorial Scholarship at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Craig & Fred: A Marine, A Stray Dog, and How They Rescued Each Other <\/b>by Craig Grossi, Morrow, 288 pages, $26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Marine\u2019s best friend, or close to it, is his dog. In this memoir, a sergeant and a stray befriend each other in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The feel-good story<\/a>, told with an acknowledged co-author (Kelly Shetron), alternates between deployment and a cross-country trip with a Marine buddy and, of course, Fred \u2014 the word Grossi mistakenly hears when another Marine refers to the mutt as \u201cfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having a pet is outside regulations, but Fred provides an \u201cescape from the combat zone we were in,\u201d and he finds fraternity. Shipping a dog home is also a no-no \u2014 \u201cI knew it wasn\u2019t right\u201d \u2014 but supportive shippers and forged signatures expedite the egress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stateside, Fred\u2019s behavior shows the wounded Grossi that \u201cit\u2019s not what happens to you that matters, it\u2019s about how you make meaning out of those experiences,\u201d and that\u2019s the tale of this dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The experience is also available in a young reader\u2019s edition<\/a> ($17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Silent Witness: The Civil Through Photography and Its Photographers <\/b>by Ron Field, Osprey, 328 pages, $35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Handsomely reproduced portraits in ornate frames dominate the selection<\/a> by a Military Images magazine editor who taps his personal archive for photographs that make the book stand out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The focus is on the men behind the camera, but the impact is in the faces of the mostly young soldiers who are most of the subjects. Except for references to the Smithsonian \u201cInstitute,\u201d the coffee-table book is presented with care and class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gun Club: USS Duncan at Cape Esperance <\/b>by Robert Fowler, Winthrop & Fish, 366 pages, $16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He never met his father, Navy Lt. Robert L. Fowler, a newlywed Harvard rower who died when torpedoes sank the destroyer Duncan during a 39-minute battle with the Japanese navy off the Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the author\u2019s use of ships\u2019 logs and his interviews with survivors produce an hour-by-hour, just-the-details report<\/a> of what happens to the sailors aboard the destroyer. Sadly, in 1942 the Navy\u2019s lack of recent fighting experience means its \u201cships, commanders and tactics were all found wanting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The executive officer treats his men like a ship of fools, and the captain\u2019s after-action report is \u201ca masterpiece of obfuscation.\u201d In 1991, the author writes, \u201cquite a few of the men told me that when they read Herman Wouk\u2019s novel \u2018The Caine Mutiny\u2019 they thought it was about the Duncan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long Way Out: A Young Woman\u2019s Journey of Self-Discovery and How She Survived the Navy\u2019s Modern Cruelty at Sea Scandal <\/b>by Nicole Waybright with Jim Bastian, SpeakPeace, 552 pages, $18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Internal bother is strong to seethe in this fastidious memoir<\/a> about a square peg trying to fit into a porthole. In third person and with names changed, \u201cBrenda\u201d self-analyzes the psychology behind her not knowing \u201chow to act\u201d where \u201cevery move she made onboard felt foreign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the destroyer Curtis Wilbur gets a new executive officer called Heather Astrid Gates \u2014 the acronym \u201cHAG\u201d \u2014 Brenda\u2019s self-predicament gets no ballast from her bombastic boss (whose real name is thinly veiled).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally the lieutenant junior grade\u2019s true calling comes to the surface when a shipmate offers her a belated but astute assessment: \u201cI think that you\u2019re a very bright young woman who seems extraordinarily unhappy aboard a ship and in the military.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racing Back to Vietnam: A Journey in War and Peace <\/b>by John Pendergrass, Hatherleigh, 256 pages, $15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An Air Force flight surgeon occupies \u201cthe backseat of a workhorse fighter of the Vietnam War: the F-4 Phantom\u201d and returns on a bicycle seat in a triathlon 44 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He finds that \u201crelatively few of today\u2019s Vietnamese can actually remember the Americans\u201d but \u201ceveryone has a family story about the war.\u201d His travelogue<\/a> follows that model with impressions that are more personal than profound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Warrior Pups: True Stories of America\u2019s K9 Heroes <\/b>by Jeff Kamen with Leslie Stone-Kamen, Lyons, 184 pages, $14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MIL-BOOKS-OUR-YEAR-OF-WARweb.jpg.jpg\")
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