Holdyn Estes > Recent Status Updates

This book had me teary eyed over many things today

The account here of the later stages of the war, as it increasingly becomes Grant + Sherman vs. Lee, is superb. I’ve learned so much, and still have so much of Grant’s life before me. Thank you for this book, Mr. Chernow

1)the military accounting here is so interesting 2)it’s really remarkable how much of a military genius this guy was given how prone to fervent bouts of alcoholism he was 3)it’s crazy to me that telegraph was a thing during the civil war—that invention alone places it squarely as one of the first modern wars 4)the Gettysburg address really is as marvelous as historians paint it—revisit it 5)Grant rules

Grant secures Paducah, KY for the Union without a shot fired

Grant takes on Galena, after proving far from a Rockefeller at everything else he tried

Hamilton rules. This is the perfect read for America at 250. How I’d love to know what he’d say about the state of America today

This guy’s brain is just different. What a legend

Vaclav Smil rules. This dude knows his food. Mind blowing

The force and passion with which Solzhenitsyn writes is second to none