The year is 1880, and the Civil War is slowly receding into the past. Lincoln has been dead for fifteen years, and Grant - retired from his second scandal-ridden term in the White House - has just returned home from a triumphant world tour. Now, in the final political battle of his life, he tries for an unprecedented third presidential term. But in one of the most dramatic and tumultuous conventions in American history, he will be defeated for renomination in Chicago. A few months later he will go spectacularly bankrupt in New York - and at the same time learn that he has cancer of the throat.Two journalists are busy describing the dying Grant for posterity: one with enthusiasm, the other with thinly veiled contempt. The supportive biographer, Chicago newspaperman Sylvanus Cadwallader, has covered Grant in the Civil War and seen the human being behind the General's grim, taciturn facade. The other journalist is Yale-educated Nicholas Trist, a wounded soldier who lost his arm to Grant's "butchery" at Cold Harbor.But at the core is Grant himself: his unwavering humility and deep pride, his quixotic intelligence, his legendary battles with alcohol, depression, and his father. Read Less