Shortly thereafter, the second blow arrived: The cigar-loving Grant was diagnosed with advanced throat cancer, and wasn’t expected to live long. In the end, Ward fled with everyone’s money, including Grant’s. He used Grant’s famous name to attract investors, but he was actually operating a massive Ponzi scheme, paying out interest but keeping investors’ money himself. Tragically, Ward turned out to be a 19 th-century Bernard Madoff. He thought he’d become rich as a partner in Grant and Ward, a New York investment bank founded by his friend Ferdinand Ward. He became an author in the final year of his life, right after he’d suffered two massive blows that would have destroyed a lesser man. The inspiring story of why and how Grant wrote his memoirs, published in 1885, is as epic as his tumultuous life. There is no higher literature than these modest, simple Memoirs.” Of Grant’s Personal Memoirs, Mark Twain wrote: “General Grant’s book is a great, unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece. Grant as the victorious military commander of the Union army and as a two-term president of the United States, but many forget that he was also a beloved author who wrote one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful memoirs of the 19 th century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |