Just last evening I finished Grant, by Ron Chernow (see my post above). As it turns out, the actual reading pages are "only" 956 pages. The remainder are pictures, acknowledgments, and chapter notes. It was quite a read. Grant was arguably our greatest war time general and one of our better presidents, even though he gets little credit for that with all the disinformation floating around about his character, intelligence, and demeanor. I found the book revealing and interesting to a high degree.