In their runaway bestseller Gettysburg, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen answered the Civil War's ultimate hypothetical question: What if Lee's army had won the victory within its grasp at Gettysburg in 1863? Now, through the same extraordinary research and brilliant character studies, we take the next step of a provocative journey: The Army of Northern Virginia is poised to invade Washington, D.C... A besieged Lincoln calls on a general with a drinking problem to save the Union. And in the East, Ulysses Grant faces a storm of calamity and rivalry-and a war on the verge of being lost....In this extraordinary book, the battlefront and home fronts come alive through the eyes of ordinary soldiers and such little known characters as General Herman Haupt, commander of the U.S. railroads, and the politician turned soldier General Dan Sickles-a political arch-enemy of Grant's. As the best of plans are undone, and every strategy countered by another, GRANT COMES EAST builds to a stunning portrait of the war that was-and the war that might have been....