A Man Named Grant

THIS Houghton Mifflin Fellowship book is a sympathetic, feminine interpretation of General U. S. Grant from his days of pre-war frustration to his ultimate martyrdom. The author has studied her material carefully and has presented the facts of her biography with reasonable accuracy. The essential curse on the book is that it is offensively intimate and feminine. The author never fails to supply fanciful details or to put thoughts into the brainpan of U. S. Grant which only existed in her own lively imagination. The tact that she consistently refers to one of the most reticent and masculine of historical characters as ‘Ulyss’ is an indication of her friendly and girlish approach.

Perhaps she will make General Grant more readily understandable to members of Women’s Republican Clubs, but her book has an evil portentousness quite out of proportion to its importance. Are we destined to have biographies of Byron in terms of ‘Gordie’ or lives of Prometheus which tell us ‘Prom’s liver didn’t feel so good that Monday. He thought “those vultures are real mean today”’?

He-men should protest this deliberate simplification and feminization of biography. A hero deserves some protection on the part of his fellow males.