Grant's Tomb
The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon
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- 19,99 €
Descripción editorial
The moving story of Ulysses S. Grant's final battle, and the definitive account of the national memorial honoring him as one of America's most enduring heroes
The final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in America. Since its creation, the popularity and condition of this monument, built to honor the man and what he represented to a grateful nation at the time of his death, a mere twenty years after the end of the Civil War, have reflected not only Grant's legacy in the public mind but also the state of New York City and of the Union.
In this fascinating, deeply researched book, presidential historian Louis L. Picone recounts the full story. He begins with Grant's heroic final battle during the last year of his life, to complete his memoirs in order to secure his family's financial future while contending with painful, incurable cancer. Grant accomplished this just days before his death, and his memoirs, published by Mark Twain, became a bestseller. Accompanying his account with numerous period photographs, Picone narrates the national response to Grant's passing and how his tomb came to be: the intense competition to be the resting place for Grant's remains, the origins of the memorial and its design, the struggle to finance and build it over the course of twelve years, and the vicissitudes of its afterlife in the history of the nation up to recent times.
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Historian Picone (The President Is Dead!) provides a copiously detailed account of efforts to memorialize U.S. president and Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant after his death in 1885. The result of those efforts, a 150-foot-tall mausoleum next to Manhattan's Riverside Park, is "larger than the final resting place of any other person in America," Picone notes. He documents resentment over the site selection (the Soldiers' Home in Washington, D.C., was a popular alternative), describes the initial design contest as "an unmitigated disaster," and tracks the ups and downs of fund-raising efforts. In the years after the memorial was dedicated in 1897, Picone writes, it vied with the Statue of Liberty as the most popular tourist attraction in the city. But rising crime rates and poor maintenance in the 1970s and '80s made the tomb a "grim poster child for urban decay," according to Picone, until a National Park Service volunteer's complaints and a 1994 New York Times editorial helped to galvanize restoration efforts. Picone's level of detail staggers, and readers with a deep interest in Grant's legacy and the history of America's monuments will best appreciate this exhaustive account.
