#between this and the lincoln bromance and some stuff i glimpsed on his main wikipedia page this man may be on the way to blorbo status

[fictionadventurer]

The memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant are much more interesting when supplemented with other sources, because this guy is so modest and matter-of-fact that he completely forgets to tell you how awesome he is.

The chapter about his West Point education includes stories like, "I did well in math and was terrible in most of my other subjects", "I hoped I could leave the army and get a job as a math professor somewhere", and "My neighbor made fun of me when I wore my uniform in my hometown." Not a single word about the fact that he set a West Point equestrian high jump record that stood for twenty-five years! Or that the academy had a horse so wild that they were going to put it down until he chose it as his mount and tamed it. Or that he had been doing dangerous bareback horse-riding stunts since the age of five. There is an entire Wikipedia page about how amazing he was at handling horses, but you would never know based on how he writes about himself. You expect a guy to gloss over the bad stuff in his life (there's not a word about alcohol), but the way he glosses over his achievements is mind-boggling.