OT: got my copy of Ron Chernow’s Grant from the library request system. Take aways after 100 pages: Chernow isn’t pulling punches with Grant’s devils, but there isn’t much to work with early on—he’s an alcoholic who knows himself to be an alcoholic, his life was an accident orchestrated by an overbearing father, circumstance, a shit-head slave-owning father-in-law, an escalating build up to war over slavery, and a personality that was both far too trusting but quick stand up to injustice. That sounds like a lot to work with, but the themes are repeated on every page. To be fair, that is human existence—for most of us our bios would be something like “he fought with Comcast over his bill to no avail.” The other theme is that while he looked like a homeless beggar on the streets of St. Louis after he was forced to resign from the Army, his wife Julia and a few others still predicted something great in his future. Unfortunately, as we all know, that was the rebellion supported and fought by his former West Point buddies from the South. Who knows what would have happened to Grant if the Civil War hadn’t erupted to pluck him from obscurity.