"After leaving the office of the presidency in 1877, Ulysses S. Grant embarked on a journey worthy of his legendary namesake, an around the world tour that took him from Europe to the Middle East and Asia over two and one half years. Accompanying Grant was journalist John Russell Young, a wartime assciate who was working in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald when Grant first arrived in England.

On assignment for the Herald, Young joined the former president's entourage and faithfully recorded every detail of the grand tour - the sightseeing, official visits, travel conditions, and, notably, Grant's candid recollections of the Civil War. So far from home, Grant felt free to speak his mind about his fellow Union officers, his Confederate adversaries, and the conduct of the war, at far more length than he would in his celebrated but close-to-the-vest memoirs.

These salty reminiscences of the war may give this travelogue its greatest historical interest." "A portrait of one of America's most brilliant - and thoughtful - military men, Around the World with General Grant is a classic work of American journalism and history. It is also a travel book, filled with reflections on exotic places and on Western, particularly British, imperialism in the years before America stepped upon the world stage."--BOOK JACKET.