Dec. 30, 2008 - Grant and Twain by Mark Perry: A Review
http://www.amazon.com/Grant-Twain-Friendship-Changed-America/dp/0679642730
I should begin by noting I am cheating. I will count this book as my first read of 2009. True, it is still 2008, but this is New Year's week and so I am fudging. Think of me as Paulson with the TARP money. My greater goal (reading as much as possible in 2009) is grand; don't pay attention to the details (like how none of that TARP money has been used yet to actually buy up toxic assets as promised).
If you feel a bit conned by Paulson, then you have entree into the world of Grant as Perry's book opens. Grant's great business venture with Ward bankrupted him; Ward ran the Madoff scheme of his day and left Grant holding the bag. A deeply honorable man, albeit one with a naive blindness to the corruption of those around him, Grant finds himself not only broke but shamed.
Grant soon thereafter discovers he has incurable tongue/throat cancer. His personal memoirs, still in print today, stand as testimony of one man's determination to beat the race against death and against poverty by writing his two volume work in his last year of life.
Well, not quite one man's determination. Enter Mark Twain. Did you know of the friendship of these men? Me either. Author Mark Perry details the last 15 months of Grant's life and the remarkable friendship of these two icons of the American past. Without Grant, Perry contends, there would have been no Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And while there may have been the memoirs of Grant, they would not have provided the degree of financial peace to Grant's surviving family that Twain ensured.
That the two shared a fascinating friendship is not in doubt. Whether that friendship changed America remains an open question. Perry's careful detailing gives one a true sense of the men and the narrow time focus of the book makes this an easy couple of day's read. If Twain was, as he claimed, a "Grant-intoxicated man," Perry's writing transforms us into that as well.
What would our world be like today if more mothers and fathers showed the same concern Grant did in his last letter to Julia? Days from dying from a progressively agonizing disease, he wrote, "Look after our dear children and direct them in the paths of rectitude. It would distress me far more to hear that one of them could depart from an honorable, upright and virtuous life than it would to know that they were prostrated on a bed of sickness from which they were never to rise alive. They have never given us any cause for alarm on this account, and I trust they never will."
If you're looking for a resolution in 2009, you'd do far worse than to adopt Grant's dying wish for his own family. Great books and great people of history inspire. Treat yourself to both in Perry's book this New Year.
Blessings, Holly
