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| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 5.3 | The History Cooperative
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July, 2006
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Book Reviews

The Perils and Potential of Popular History1

BUNTING, JOSIAH. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Times Books, 2004. xvii + 180 pp. Editor's introduction, notes, index. $20.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8050-6949-6.

KORDA, MICHAEL. Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. l + 161 pp. Notes. $19.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-06-059015-7.

PERRY, JAMES M. Touched With Fire: Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles that Made Them. New York: PublicAffairs, 2003. xi + 335 pp. Introduction, illustrations, bibliography, index. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-58648-114-2. New York: PublicAffairs, 2005. $16.00 (paper), ISBN 1-5864-8290-4.
      Unquestionably, academic historians in recent decades have neglected the politics and presidencies of the Gilded Age. Popular historians are left to fill the gaps. Sometimes popular historians perform their services admirably, harkening back to an earlier tradition of nonprofessionals who made significant contributions. James M. Perry's Touched with Fire: Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles that Made Them, Josiah Bunting's Ulysses S. Grant, and Michael Korda's Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero represent the interesting qualitative differences possible in popular history. 1
      Journalist James M. Perry's Touched with Fire is, in itself, an excellent example of both the promise and the common problems of the genre. Perry's distinguished career as both a military and political journalist would seem to have prepared him well for his task. His primary goal in writing Touched with Fire was to remind readers that Presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley were once "young and virile and full of martial spirit" (xvi). 2
      Perry's narrative skills serve him well as he recounts where each man stood as the Civil War began. Grant was a clerk in his father-in-law's leather shop, Garfield an Ohio state Senator, Hayes a lawyer, Harrison a court reporter, and McKinley only eighteen years of age. Each man rallied to the call to serve the Union for noble reasons, and they were committed to their cause. Perry devotes two chapters to Grant's rise and successes, documenting the general's determination and skill. We find none of the old slanders of Grant as a "drunken butcher." 3
      If Perry's take on Grant is revisionist, his account of James Garfield's wartime service in the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Chickamauga in Northern Georgia is a revelation. Garfield's daring, cunning, élan, and leadership while fighting a formidable enemy barely overshadowed his political ambitions. Likewise, Perry breathes life into the touching relationship between Rutherford Hayes and the young William McKinley. Any student of the era would be well served to read about each man's motivation. Perry makes good use of his sources, including Hayes's remarkable diary (now available online), choosing his anecdotes and quotations well. Even the less-colorful Harrison becomes a more vivid character in battle. Because the middle chapters of Touched with Fire present a compelling and useful story, the conclusion comes as a great disappointment. . . .
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