You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant: A Farcical Biography

by Brad Neely

A comically unorthodox “biography”

Spanning from the birth of Ulysses S. Grant until his victory over the Confederacy, You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant gives us an honest portrait of an American hero who struggled to balance love, soldiering, and the attainment of the American Dream.

Taking the accessible, pop history of Coe’s You Never Forget Your First and adding more of the nerdy, punk humor of Rainn Wilson or Judd Apatow, You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant is for both history and humor audiences alike. Examining the validity of biography by hilariously breaking all the form's rules, this book removes the pomp to deliver a hopeful message of human that the heroes we now venerate were also flawed, flesh and blood individuals and that we, too, are never too small to achieve great things. In bringing Grant to life, Brad Neely may have created his greatest cult classic yet.

Genres: Audiobook, History, Civil War, Nonfiction, Comedy

Audible Audio

Published January 23, 2024

Reviews

[Mike Migdall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brad Neely's Wizard People, Dear Reader had a monumental impact on me when I was a teen, and listening to the audiobook of You, Me, And Ulysses S. Grant felt like coming home after so many years to find that home never stopped loving me, that home has only appreciated in value and beauty over the years, and that home has an incredible # of jokes per room. A masterwork.

[Sean McGowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would cut off my right arm and walk around with the bloodied stump exposed to have a tenth of this comedy writing talent. Fuck me, man. It’s stupid good. In between dizzying combinations of 360° no-scope jokes, Brad Neely somehow finds the time to meditate on the nature of history, humanity, and the darkness that lies within all men’s hearts. It’s like watching a basketball player go up for an earth-shattering dunk, and then halfway through he freezes mid-air to solve a Rubik’s Cube before slamming it home. “Sure, I could be doing some Extremely Serious Writing if I wanted to. But I’m using my brain powers for this, a parade of increasingly funnier horse names.” Amen.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook because it’s in The Voice (I have the real physical book too but that’s just for leaving around the place when folk come over)

[Zane Gordon-Bouzard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A singular work of holy comedic brilliance. Part biography, part cartoon madness, all poetry, of Grant, of Bigfoots, of Cump, of blood congealed like baked cheese on pudding, of ants crawling into the mound of your brain's sandpile, of witches, and hairy, wired testicles clinging to great grandma memory banks, of cool K.O.s of untold millions, of skin and hair and arms flailing into history, of Stephen King Mist monsters disappearing right after you killed your son and the nice grocery store people, of good and evil and the very dead difference between the two, bull and goat, freedom and slavery, you can't spell Ulysses S. without "US" --- AMEN!

Neely's masterpiece.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disliked it less than I expected. The humor wasn't my style, and the flowery descriptions were probably intended as satire but got old fast. Still, there were nuggets here and there, and no matter what it's a hell of a story. Neely humanized Grant in a way no other biography has.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

enjoyed Brad Neely’s Professor Brothers (I did - A’s for all, A’s all around!)? then this criminally overlooked book, which he reads in the style of a PB lecture over the course of 12 hours , is an absolute banger that you can’t afford to miss. imagine Cormac McCarthy-lite prose but calibrated for humor, more or less faithfully (which was the case for a lot of the PB YouTube work) following “Unconditional Surrender” Grant’s career as a “horse lord” until Appomattox in 1865.



to wit:



“Squeeze yourself into that boarding-school vibe. Feel it with me. Feel the bunk beds creaking, the cafeterias steaming. See dimly the bodies drooping in the dark mornings of sunbaked moonshine on simmer. Hear that insufferable, invisible bugle gleefully menacing the world. Feel that there were no girls. Feel the bracing river-swimming, the sparring, the mounting, the running and running, and the morphing of figurative art books into functional pornography. In the day there was training, but in the night (and in any other discoverable time) Our Little Man worked at his battered pee-pee. They all did. Laundry came in stiff. The nights came, and the young accessed themselves, despite the rule against it, for the West Point professors were using the boxer’s theory that semen was a demon of aggression, and a man should save it so to bottle up their fierceness. None ever was; none ever will be. They would have done it on a planet with no sexual partners to imagine, and I’m sure some weren’t interested in this, but across the iron river was a hive of “queen bees in bloom” at a sparkling young ladies’ school where tower windows streamed with messes of tresses. Every year, a quixotic cadet would brave the waters without first securing reciprocal interest. Every year, one would pack contraband like gumdrops and spiked cider. The others would help prepare for his tryst, and shandy drinks were drunk to fortify the spirit. Finally, every damn year, one would swim like a horny fish, or steal a canoe like an evolved one, only to return home rightly denied.

Each morning, the bugle blew, as reliable as Hyperion in his star cart rolling up Dawn’s skirt. In homeroom, undergraduate cadets were given an overview of old-school styles of war. First, the witching ways of weaponry from Cain’s rock to David’s sling, to centurion whip to the contemporary subsets of explosives and firearms. They heard the international rumors about secret “wonder weapons,” past, present, and future: harquebuses, telegraphs, cameras, revolvers, armored trains, hot-air balloons, steroids, Captain Britain, et al.

Before lunch was wrestling: Greco, Roman, and theatric. After chow, there was long-gun practice and short-knife defense, muskets and revolvers, murder and math. Cadets learned about Army hierarchies, ranks, logistics, and infrastructures—in other words, they internalized who told whom what to do, how, by using what, and ultimately where to get this from which underling. The class’s scores were never great predictors for who would later lead in the real dances of men. Companies, regiments, platoons, squads, infantries—the cadets had to memorize it all so that we won’t have to for the sake of the general writer. In “tactics and strategy,” they learned the stagecraft of Napoleon’s dance moves, and the timing-wisdom behind every piss break that Washington ever took.

And my God, the maps. They were expected to remember so many maps. But cartography led to the surveyor’s science of charting elevations, distances, and relations between terrestrial attributes of the earth. Topography was as important as geography, and the most effective generals would attune themselves to the contours of the land via bodily geodesy. With the removal of man-made lines and arbitrary boundaries, Ulysses was freed to find that he had an innate internal plumb bob, and like a terraforming geomancer, he took to seeing reality as an exploitable surface. Unfortunately, to accurately feel such knowledge is one thing, but to further communicate such feelings is quite another. Grant’s earned marks did not reflect his education.”

Highly recommended.

[Laika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consistently funny. Highly recommend the audiobook version as this is basically a sequel to "Dear Wizard People" although the shift in subject matter from Harry Potter to the Civil War means the goofy narrator gets to speak with surprising moral clarity about American slavery and the different ways people were able to rationalize it at the time.

[R̷̢̢̨͔̩̲̮͋o̸͍̞̯̖͉͆̄́̔́͘͝ṣ̷̛̲̳̯͇̦̣͛͗̂̽̿̈́̃͛͜ͅę̷̢͔̫̰̳̍ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened via book on tape cause Brad Neely does the voice. It’s nigh indescribable. It seems like every other page has a quote that’s as sage as it is baffling. We’re whipped between genuine seeming historical recollections and horse-based fantasies that drip with Neely’s buck wild prose. And I mean Buck fuckin’ Wild, man. I need a copy of this book to pore over. Five Bags of Popcorn is my rating, and I’ll also throw in a bonus satchel of provisions for USG

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant” is probably of the funniest books I’ve ever read, up there with stuff like Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim,” Patrick deWitt’s “Sisters Brothers,” Caren Beilin’s “Revenge of the Scapegoat,” Bruno Maddox’s “Little Blue Dress,” or even Flann O’Brien’s “At Swim-Two-Birds.” I was laughing so hard at one point while reading the book that my wife came from the other room to see what was going on.

The book pulls off a remarkable feat—not only is it a hilarious, quick-moving account of Grant’s life and war-time work, it’s also oddly moving. Beyond the jokes and riffs and (perhaps) hundreds of references to masturbation, the book reminds the reader of a trait that’s accidentally, but not essentially, American, and that also happened to be demonstrated by a host of Union soldiers during the Civil War: the willingness to sacrifice yourself for your belief in what is right and just—an idea of what your country could be—and to prevent the immiseration of oppressed people. The book is a portrait of an imperfect man who was striving, like many others at the time, to create a more perfect country than the one he was born into.

Neely, in character as Grant’s bumbling but clear-eyed biographer, writes about Grant’s life and the wider historical context in a modern, conversational way. So you get a lot of good basketball references to the Western theater as the “Western Conference” and Grant’s horsemanship is almost always presented in fantastic skateboarding terms. There’s something so compelling about Neely’s re-telling of history—it’s both as entertaining as what you’d see on an episode of “Drunk History” but also more serious too, more morally considered. An incredibly fun and fascinating book.

[Skyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author reads the audiobook in WIZARD PEOPLE, DEAR READER voice - that’s an instant must-read for me.

While it never reaches the quotable brilliance of WPDR (calling West Point “Kill School” in The Voice got me everytime), it does have some amazing jokes and writing. Imagine a snarky, progressive 2024 man doing an improvised drunk history of U S Grant and The Civil War. Very funny, and you’ll accidentally learn something.

Also, this setup is probably the only way I’d ever read a biography about USG. As a biography, it feels like half of a book - where is the rest??

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I'm too old for this shit."
-- that guy in "Lethal Weapon"

If this had come out when I was 14, I might have luuurrrved it. Alas, it did not. It has well-trodden irreverence, relentless whimsy and spasms of Beautiful Prose, along with pop-culture anachronisms and non-19th (or any other)-century dialogue that will age like Lord Buckley's beatnik monologues from the 1950s. Maybe Neely was aiming for something like "Hamilton" and missed.

Main lesson learned: "Drunk History" (to which people have compared it) is funny precisely because the narrator is drunk. I'll assume Neely wasn't when he did this. He writes very fluidly, though, as if the words pour out of him unbidden; the effect is mesmerizing, even when the book is at its most affected and annoying. That counts for something.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A goddamn delight.

I listened to the audiobook (recommended) but also plan to buy a physical copy to really drill down on and appreciate the purplest of prose, the wonderfully unexpected turns of phrase.

This here is a rich text. Study it accordingly.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the author’s commitment to the bit, it just didn’t work for me. It was a laudable effort, just wasn’t my cup of tea.

[Jack Grimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I really know which angle to review this book from. Neely is, of course, extremely funny in his inhabitance of a narrator-slash-character of the amateur historian with questionable methods but strong (and correct!) convictions. This book is not an attempt to simplify the horrific reasons for the American Civil War, nor is it an attempt to render its horrific consequences comedic. It's a biography which stirs in plenty of fiction and guesswork in its quest to neatly narrativize the life of a man as complex and self-contradictory as anyone and which, unlike the cowardly professionals of the field, is completely honest about this fact, calling into much-deserved question the integrity of the entire genre. Neely's prose, while always criticizing and mocking itself, does sincerely manage to render subjects that deserve it (Shiloh, Lincoln) with transcendent gravity, and in other places renders subjects that instead deserve retroactive ridicule (masculinity, arisocracy, militarism, the Confederacy) with unflinching scorn. This book, largely centered on the rivalry between Grant and Robert E. Lee, is not an attempt to humanize or excuse the latter. As it will tell you repeatedly, the Confederacy was an evil nation founded on evil ideas, and any historian who frames it any less firmly than that is a coward.
The book is, also, extremely funny, and maybe the first book I've actually laughed at in a long time. The backward ignorance of 1860s America is blown wide open in occasional pages-long collages of overheard dialogue and intentionally overwrought descriptions of the hardscrabble conditions ubiquitous at the time. Genuinely my favorite thing I've read this year.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for a book like this. Incredible.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply the funniest thing I've listened to all year, if not longer. If you get this - and you should - you MUST get the audiobook, as Neely's in-character delivery as the bizarre Southern eccentric (in whose voice the book is written) is phenomenal. Oddly enough, with only a partial knowledge of US Civil War history, I actually did learn some things from this ridiculous book. Anyone familiar with Neely's previous work (especially the seminal Wizard People, Dear Reader) will know his skill for crafting a convoluted mess of a sentence that mesmerises before a triumphant punchline breaks through the hypnotic swirls of language. I didn't just laugh while listening to this, I guffawed like a buffoon. But Neely also knows that comedy and tragedy are deeply interwoven, and that hilarity can give way to profound insight. Some of the most impactful moments of this book are when he stops to deliver (again, in the same crotchety-weirdo-teacher voice) some glorious rant or fundamental truth about the human condition. The horrific brutality of war, stupid horse names, the evils of slavery, and the romantic life of a 'Kill School' graduate measuring only 'four foot feet': all of these are described in delirious prose.

Much of the humour in this book is derived from prose so purple it could be sewn into an emperor's toga, or plummeting bathos that underscores the fact that every person in the story is a person with hopes and needs and failures and bodily functions. As a biography, it's a strange and worshipful shaggy dog story that swerves away from hagiography to acknowledge and underscore Grant's flaws and mistakes. Neely parodies the Great Man mythmaking that built up the figure of Ulysses S. Grant in the American popular consciousness, overfilling his story with rapturous asides and epic tableaux until the pomp and heroism bursts like a party balloon and deflates into the shape of a flawed, driven human being. It's the humanism at the core of this book that makes every joke land, and moved me quite powerfully. I hope this isn't the last we'll see of Neely's longform writing (or narration), because this was eleven and a half hours of joy.

[Eddie Osburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never felt so lied to. My favorite Brad Neely work used to be Brad Neelys Harg Nallin’ Sclopio Peepio. My new favorite Brad Neely work is something completely and utterly different but still incredibly funny. Brad Neely has biting wit with a spectacularly silly voice. I’ve never heard someone so consistently string together alliterations and partial rhymes and anecdotes and nonsense and phrases that are almost nonsense all together so seamlessly. I’ve never seen anyone do what I just said while also telling a semi-true historical narrative about killing racists. I’ve never seen someone talk about life’s biggest mysteries in ways that seem profound, are tremendously confusing, and I don’t actually know what Brad Neely meant by that last thing he said. I’ve felt pulled in and swept up by this book in ways I didn’t think were possible. Like a flying fish grabbing my left foots big toe and taking me to heaven. And maybe this is just nonsense too. Brad Neely has truly made me feel something strange inside of myself, like an awakening homosexuality, except it’s that I feel as if I’m USG himself. But maybe we are all USG. And maybe Ulysses S Grant is all of us.

[Nakedfartbarfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brad Neely's freshman opus-- Wizard People, Dear Reader-- is something my friends and I have annoyingly, and only semi-situationally, quoted since the mid-aughties. It was also a simple bellwether for occasionally screening with new pals to see if we could riff. In telling the story of Harry Potter, Brad Neely gets none of the details right but is holistically (and poetically) accurate in the broad strokes; accurate enough to get a cease-and-desist from JK & Warner Brothers. He does the same gag here with Ulysses S Grant.

Despite my overweening adolescent fondness for Dear Reader, I have to say that this book is the superior effort, which is good, as we ought all move on from the embattled (read: shitty-ass) Rowling, even in subversive parody. This book is a vernacular masterpiece; the only dire problem with it is that I have no one to volley quotes with for the next twenty years.

Sidebar: I don't envy anyone's task of writing back cover copy for this, but describing it as "the nerdy punk humor of Rainn Wilson or Judd Apatow" is up there with history's worst blurbs. That's some serious "getting Boss Baby vibes from this" level of media literacy. Seriously, what???

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biased here because I’m a big fan of Brad Neely, especially “Wizard People, Dear Reader,” which is the closest reference point to this work. He seems sober this time around, so the narration is less cantankerous. He has an amazing gift for turns of phrase. So often I find myself trying to remember his lines so I can sound as hilarious as he does. A fool’s errand as he is inimitable. The jokes are frequent and funny, though I flagged a little bit in the more serious moments. Why did he choose Grant as his subject? Of all historical (or fictional) figures, Grant’s story doesn’t seem ripe with farcical possibility. While Neely makes it work—i’m a fan, of course—this is a confusing artifact that is hard to recommend. I’m not sure if this is even available as a print book as audio seems crucial to the experience.

[Nick Oristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having just finished this work, I feel it is my duty as an official, professional, bonafide historian to say the following: Brad Neely makes Ron Chernow look like a simpering infant. What took the old man a doorstopping 1,104 pages Neely manages to do, and more in a mere 290. Drawing on journals, letters, and hearsay Neely weaves a tale of the civil war years of a man who can be at times heroic, many times confounding, and (dare I say it) for a moment, a to-Semitic. It is an unyielding look at a man who had a complicated history. A man who recognized his mistakes and attempted to make good when he could. It is a refreshing take that is often missing from our historical community. This is a book I suggest buying in threes: one for you, one for your civil war buff dad, and one for the local elementary school library. I wait with bated breath to see whose story Neely will tell next. Amen.

[Joshua Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I downloaded this app specifically to give this book a review. For the last fifteen years, when asked, I would proclaim “The Dispossessed” as my favorite book. This has officially taken the throne. The audiobook specifically is now a must have in my life. I never want to be without it. This book has it all, from deep cut historical facts, to mid 1800’s unsolicited phallic photos and more. I have finished the audiobook version four times and immediately started it over again. It just makes me happy. And I find something new every time. I also bought a hard copy that now has a lot of yellow highlights in it.
Thank you Brad Neely, I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for a book written just for me.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brad Neely writes like a poetic savant who only knows prose. His characters are funhouse mirrors of characters reflecting upon more characters. He is a genius comedian and a master of the list. He knows lists are built for comedy, they set the pace, create expectations, build suspense, anticipation, and... punchline. This book made me laugh ten times more than I cried, but I laughed a lot. Brad uses Ulysses's story to capture not only the life of the man, but the lives that we all live, regardless of the time we inhabit. This is a work of love, and I loved every second of it. The worst part of this book is when it's over.

[ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Turner Publishing Company, Keylight Books, Netgalley and the author Brad Neely for a free ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! It was, at first, kind of hard to get into. When I initially read the description I was expecting the book to be mostly biography based with a few comedic elements, however I would categorize the book as comedic, somewhat fictional retelling of events. I would have loved to seen Grant's actual presidency discussed, but overall was very satisfied with how and where it ended. 4 stars!

[Dan P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting to finish on the day of this apalling presidential election. Brad Neely is a phenomenal writer, whose purple prose tickles your brain before dropping an anvil on it. "The idea of the confederacy is a virus immune to time, yet to be destroyed. There are ways to fail at life. The most obvious way is to hurt innocents intentionally. The confederacy did so. Mistakes, forgiveness, acceptance, mutual respect; there are limits to words. Some bad actions are felt forever — unhealing, immutable — so hurt wisely. Amen."

[William Harmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Neely humor, this book had me laughing out loud several times. Particularly with regards to segments about Sherman and Neely's ruthless condemnation of the Confederacy.

That said, it stops at the end of the Civil War, and a biography of Grant that doesn't cover his presidency is a bit odd? I felt like it could have used another quarter of the book on the back end.

As a biography, it's middling, but it's most certainly funnier than any other I've read. A delightfully light hearted read.

[John Allgood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very different and weird take on US Grant, general and eventual President. If you aren't familiar with the author, I suggest a quick google of his video Washington. Or, if you are of a different ilk, a google of Dear Reader, the Harry Potter alternative universe. If either of those two viewpoints amuse or intrigue you, you will appreciate this book. If not, quickly move on as this isn't for you.

[Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man this was funny. I think it got an audible laugh from me on average every three pages or so. And so dense I gotta read it again, if you put every sentence on its own line it would read like an epic poem. Made me tear up in a couple of places too. I don't feel like I'm doing it justice but there you go. One of the best books I've read in years, including The Rings of Saturn.

[Dennis Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like William Faulkner was trying to make you laugh multiple times per paragraph. A surprising amount of poignant moments and musings about the nature of history and remembrance to balance it out. But damn, Neely has a way with writing prose that is so descriptive it’s funny, but also dynamic and bizarre enough to remain constantly entertaining in that indulgence.

[Joe Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great blend of satire, honesty, philosophy, fact, fiction. At times this book is deeply outlandish, at other times it's just deep. Pointed, obscene, comical and heartfelt are other adjectives I use to describe this book.

[Joslin Harmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. silly and stupid and funny and weird. I enjoyed it immensely. I recommend going for the vibes and not taking it too seriously. The fact that Neely laughs outloud several times while reading it is fantastic.