Hi @AUTiger and welcome to the forums from the host of the Ulysses S. Grant forum if I haven't said that already!Far as beginner biographies to start with on Grant.I have heard of Ron White's,Grant By Chernow.For a beginner is this the order one should start?
1)Grant Trilogy By Lloyd Lewis and Bruce Catton
2)American Ulysses By Ronald White
3)Grant By Chernow
Nick Sacco, who works as a park ranger at the US Grant Historic Site in St Louis and blogs about Civil War stuff, wrote about Grant bios here. One of the "great," but also "concise" bios he recommended was:
"Josiah Bunting III – Ulysses S. Grant (2004): For those looking for a punchy, concise analysis of Grant’s life, I highly recommend checking out Josiah Bunting’s brief biography, which clocks in around 200 pages. Bunting does a nice job of interpreting Grant’s presidency (although I would like to have seen more about Grant’s reconstruction policies), and the book is full of eloquent passages that provide a nice historical context for explaining the world in which Grant operated. I enjoyed this book very much."
I think you will find your answer in the link @DanSBHawk provided above where he mentions Nick Sacco and his blog.Also in addition to the lewis/catton series and Chernow and White's how are McFeely and Jean Edward Smith's,etc?
Also is Jean Edward smith's book rated as highly as White or Chernow?
I'm with you on this one @DBF and did the same. It is also highly readable and has been praised for that as well.I jumped right in with Grant’s Memoirs and for me it was the right choice. It took me a long time to read it and I found I kept going to the computer looking up additional information to aid me in completing a fuller picture of events and battles. From there I discovered other books on Grant to read, but I found it helped me to hear it first as Grant wrote it.