Completed just days before his death and hailed by Mark Twain as "the most remarkable work of its kind since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar," this is the now-legendary autobiography of ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT (1822-1885), 18th president of the United States and the Union general who led the North to victory in the Civil War. Though Grant opens with tales of his boyhood, his education at West Point, and his early military career in the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, it is Grant's intimate observations on the conduct of the Civil War, which make up the bulk of the work, that have made this required reading for history students, military strategists, and Civil War buffs alike.

南北戦争で北軍の将軍として活躍し、第18代大統領に就任したグラントによる回顧録です。晩年に借金を背負ったグラントは、出版社から高額な報酬で回顧録を書くよう提案され、借金の返済と家族のために回顧録の執筆を引き受けました。このときグラントは喉頭がんを患っており、回顧録を書き上げてすぐに亡くなっています。原文のPersonal memoirs of U. S. Grant ...は第70章までありますが、邦訳の『自著克蘭徳一代記』は前編の1～5のみが刊行されており、第39章までを翻訳しています。