The Civil War has long been one of my favorite periods in American history, and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman are perhaps its most significant actors outside of Abraham Lincoln. So imagine my delight when I discovered a joint biography that focuses on their unique bond, and how it was instrumental in winning the war.  Other books have touched on the subject, but not in the depth I was looking for. But sadly, the marketing for a book and the book itself can sometimes be two completely different things, as is the case here.

Grant and Sherman is a work of popular history that covers the biographies of its subjects from their childhoods through the conclusion of the Civil War, with a few chapters dealing with their postwar relationship. There is very little here that hasn’t been covered in greater detail in other books. It’s nice to get reacquainted with the events of their lives, but unless you’ve never read biographies of either man — or their highly recommended memoirs — then you’re not going to get much out of it. There is very little detailed analysis on their friendship, and a lot of the writing — particularly in the later half of the book where there seems to be fewer primary sources — extrapolates what the two men where thinking or feeling. It may make for good drama, but it’s not necessarily good history.

That said, I would recommend Grant and Sherman for anyone who would like a breezy primer on the lives of both men, as well as an overview of the western theater of the Civil War.  There is genuine emotion to be found here, and Flood does a fine job of dramatizing the contradictory feelings of joy and despair that filled the nation following the War’s conclusion and the President’s assassination. More widely-read aficionados of the war will probably find themselves underwhelmed, but newcomers to the topic will definitely enjoy it.