BOOKS IN BRIEF Ulysses S. Grant on Leadership Executive Lessons from the Front Lines by John A. Barnes Prima, 276 pp., $22.95 This is the latest revisionist effort to bolster the reputation of Grant as a military and political leader. The book deserves far more attention than it has received. The case made by Barnes, a speechwriter, journalist, and Grantophile, is convincing. Grant, he writes, has been the “Rodney Dangerfield of American history,” getting little respect. Grant himself is partly at fault: “Reserved and modest,” he “allowed others to define him.” Two of those definitions are the “butcher” who maximized casualties, and the drunkard. Barnes persuasively disputes both. “Ulysses S. Grant on Leadership” is part of Prima’s gimmicky but valuable series of “leadership lessons” drawn from the experiences of American leaders. So far, the series has looked at Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and ex-GE boss Jack Welch. Grant, Barnes says, was an innovative leader, resilient and persistent, an effective communicator, a man of character who refused to network his way to the top but let his actions speak for themselves, and a teambuilder who judged others by their performance, not their words. As president, he was “an energetic, honorable, and, in many respects, strong chief executive.” –Fred Barnes Elizabeth The Woman and the Queen by Graham Turner Macmillan, 214 pp., L18.99 The writer A.S. Byatt once dubbed her series of novels about life in England from the 1950s onward as chronicles of “the New Elizabethan Age.” One wonders who besides a novelist would dare to name our time after the woman who is perhaps the twentieth century’s least representative figure. In “Elizabeth: The Woman and the Queen,” British journalist Graham Turner draws a portrait of a woman who, during her half-century reign, has been a paragon of calm stability, never departing from her principles of duty, detail, routine, and emotional self-suppression. “She has almost,” a staff member once observed, “trained feelings out of herself.” These principles, Turner explains, have guided the queen through perpetual family turmoil, including the death of Princess Diana, and are central to her success on the throne. In his preface Turner notes that he does not characterize his book as a biography, but as a “portrait.” There are no genealogies, dates, or royal milestones in the book. Instead, he depicts Elizabeth through the testimony of family, friends, and servants who provide countless anecdotes of the queen apart from her public persona–a visitor to Buckingham Palace overhearing the queen mock him; her zealous protection of her beloved dogs; her innate inability to hold a conversation with female guests. Turner is not uncritical of the queen, analyzing her as an over-indulged daughter and an absent, unaffectionate mother. Nonetheless, he counts himself a monarchist and one of her admirers. Readers craving a tale of royal scandal will not find it in Turner’s book, but this should not discourage them. Of Elizabeth II, the poet Philip Larkin seems to have it closest to right: “In times when nothing stood, / but worsened, or grew strange, / there was one constant good: / she did not change.” –Rachel DiCarlo Captain from Castile by Samuel Shellabarger Bridge Works, 633 pp., $32.50 Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger Bridge Works, 433 pp., $18.95 How these bestselling swashbucklers from the 1940s ever fell out of print is a mystery. Shellabarger was a master of the high-adventure historical romance, in the direct line that runs from “Ivanhoe” and “The Three Musketeers” down to Patrick O’Brian. “Captain from Castile” is very good, and “Prince of Foxes” is even better, ranking somewhere around “Captain Blood” and only a smidgen below “Scaramouche.” If you know what that means, there’s no way you can pass up these reprints with new introductions by Jonathan Yardley. If you don’t know what it means, now’s the time to find out. –J. Bottum
