“Jack Hurst writes brilliantly, with a bold, energetic style that is highly engaging. His analysis is thought-provoking and enlightening. Readers will enjoy this book and come away from it with deeper understandings of Grant, the Civil War, nineteenth-century America, and military history.”—Steven E. Woodworth, coeditor of The Shiloh Campaign
“In this new, unorthodox biography of Grant, Jack Hurst explores Grant’s origins and early military service to uncover what separated Grant’s generalship from that of so many of his peers, positing that it was Grant’s experience as a ‘common man’ in the antebellum United States that created his no-nonsense, practical approach to warfare. Amid a raft of recent Grant biographies, Hurst’s take on Grant raises points well worth considering.”—David A. Powell, author of The Impulse of Victory: Ulysses S. Grant at Chattanooga
“In Hardscrabble General, [Hurst] provides a fine portrait of a leader who never sought wealth or notoriety, who cared much more for the men he commanded and the nation that had educated him than he did for the headlines he made. A man whose life lessons taught him the humility with which he approached his job and the clarity of purpose needed to see a thing through to its conclusion. To win.”—Chris Scott, Chapter 16
“Nothing ever came easy to Ulysses S. Grant. From a childhood dominated by an irascible, overbearing father and an equally reticent mother [to] experiencing all the horrors and devastation of war at the ripe young age of twenty-four to the humiliation in front of an increasingly conscious and critical public eye as he desperately tried to support his family, a humbled Grant understood the meaning of true deprivation. . . . Yet rather than let these circumstances defeat him, Grant endured these hardships, learned valuable life lessons from them, and, combined with his formative background, used these lessons to his advantage to become the greatest and most successful battle commander in American military history. So argues Jack Hurst in his compelling and highly engaging America’s Hardscrabble General, Ulysses S. Grant: From Farm Boy to Shiloh.”—Richard G. Mannion, Civil War Book Review
“Hurst contrasts Grant with other Civil War generals, both North and South, and finds that his protagonist shines by comparison, not just in his accomplishments, but in his character. Hurst finds that some officers of a supposed better class than Grant lacked his persistence in achieving goals or his community with the common soldier.”—Russell K. Brown, The Journal of America’s Military Past— -