Kenneth William wrote a series of five books on Ulysses S. Grant in the 1950's. He died before he could complete his supposedly "definitive treatment" of Grant the general. Williams' books are well-researched and you will find few factual gaffes. However, his writing style is often torturous and his passion for meaningless minutiae will probably drive you crazy. He excels in listing every detail of a battle until you're shaking your head or holding it as you reach for the aspirin bottle.

Williams' reverence for Grant is evident throughout. He is also peculiarly defensive about the issue of Grant's occasional over-indulgence in whiskey and in his footnotes he becomes almost hysterical on this topic. This type of hagiography is misplaced in a serious work and seriously undermines the credibility of the work. William's five volumes have been pretty much forgotten in the modern era and for good reason. He tells the reader almost nothing about Grant as a human being, his private life (pivotal in Grant's story) is regally ignored throughout.

If you are interested in examining Grant as a general, opt for the much superior books by J.F.C. Fuller, available on Amazon. This is a lifeless and boring treatment of a highly complex and fascinating man.

For those of us living along the Lewis and Clark trail in Montana and using this book with school children who study Lewis and Clark, we found an obvious error of historical fact. Lewis and Clark never traveled into the Flathead Valley as Kroll states on page 23. Instead, the explorers crossed over Lost Trail Pass into our lovely Bitterroot Valley and traveled north to make camp at Traveler's Rest, on the edge of present day Lolo, MT. The old Lolo trail (now US highway 12) leaves the Bitterroot Valley crossing the Bitterroot Mountains to the west. Could it be Kroll became confused because the Native Americans Lewis and Clark met in the Bitterroot were the Salish Flathead tribe?