Probably by consensus, the best military memoirs written in the past 200 years are Ulysses S. Grant’s. Grant had a wonderful story to tell, and never suffered from a shortage of opinions. He was also a great writer, although it probably didn’t hurt that (if the rumors are true), he got some assistance on the prose front from Mark Twain. Whatever the case, Grant’s memoirs make for a fabulous and incredible read.

Fans of military memoirs universally revere Grant’s. Thus, a lot of them probably won’t like the following statement: Ariel Sharon’s autobiography “Warrior” is a better, more compelling book.

IN READING “WARRIOR,” it’s sometimes amazing that a life such as Sharon’s was ever lived. His battle-field heroics were epic over a 35 year span. His personal life had more sudden jolts than even the most maladroit novelist would dare insert. And yet on the pages of “Warrior” it all plays out: A life story that is epic, noble and moving.

The Sharon that has entered the popular imagination is a caricature of the actual man. When he is thought of, he is usually considered the corpulent leader who is unyielding, charmless and ferocious. His actual life, though, provides an endless supply of telling details that contradict that simplistic and partly erroneous narrative.

The stories of Sharon’s personal tragedies are poorly known outside of Israel. While the father of an infant, his wife was killed in a car accident. Sharon subsequently married his late wife’s sister. Ten years later, literally in the hours following his greatest triumph in 1967’s Six Day War, his eldest son died in a tragic gun accident when he was 11. Details like those serve to humanize the caricature that has so hardened in the popular imagination.

It’s also hard to believe that the enormously overweight politician who tragically exited the public scene because of a massive stroke over a year ago was not only a magnificent military strategist but also an incredibly able and dangerous fighting man. As a young soldier, Sharon snuck across Israel’s border with Jordan and kidnapped a few Jordanian soldiers that Israel could then trade for the release of imprisoned soldiers of its own. It was a the kind of exercise that relied on Sharon’s most noteworthy attributes– audaciousness, intelligence and a complete lack of fear

In “Warrior,” we see the development of the intrepid fighting man into a master strategist. Sharon fought in all of Israel’s wars during its first 35 years of existence, from 1948’s War for Independence to 1973’s Yom Kippur War. From his earliest days in the Israeli Defense Forces, Sharon distinguished himself as a rising star. Israel’s founding President David Ben Gurion was so impressed with Sharon, he would often invite a then-young Sharon to military briefings and place Sharon at his side.

Sharon also details his legendary internal struggles both in the IDF and in Israeli politics. Although unsurprisingly Sharon comes down on his own side in the retelling of every internecine flare-up, it’s still noteworthy that Sharon had so many run-ins with so many disparate figures. From Menachem Begin to Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan to Yithak Rabin, Sharon at one time or another tangled with virtually every member of Israel’s vaunted class of ’48. He emerged from each of these battles convinced that his adversary was in some fundamental way wanting.

There’s no denying that Sharon’s massive ego fairly leaps off of “Warrior’s” pages. In the memoir game, that pretty much goes with the territory. Men who decide that they have memoirs worth writing are seldom crippled with self-doubt or prone to a surfeit of introspection. More to the point, men who have lived lives so significant that anyone will actually read their memoirs are by definition men of action and accomplishment. Such men don’t habitually take a step back to ponder whether or not they’ve grown too big for their britches.

“Warrior” was written in 1989. After its initial publication, Sharon’s opinion of himself was subsequently validated by the Israeli electorate. Although he never explicitly says as much, he always thought he was the true star of the class of 1948. Before his rule was cut short, he had transcended ordinary Israeli partisan politics in a way eerily foreshadowed by his observations in “Warrior.”

“Warrior” will also have a great deal of relevance for anyone who wants to understand the struggle we’re currently in. As Sharon repeatedly notes, there are good generals and bad generals. He would no doubt scoff at the notion that a man’s opinion should get extra merit just because he once wore a uniform. He also has some rather piquant observations on how Israeli domestic politics provided comfort to her foes. It was impossible to read these passages and not think of our own sad political state of affairs.

I HAD READ “WARRIOR” A FEW YEARS ago and decided to re-read it this week to review it. I though it might have some relevance for our current situation. I was surprised at how much relevance it had.

When I went to open the book this week, I saw that someone had written on the inside flap the words “killer” and “murderer.” Aside from the fact that a guest of mine at some point in the last few years felt comfortable perpetrating a low level act of vandalism in my home, I found the inscription telling.

History is written by the winners. Right now, history largely pegs Ariel Sharon as a villain, the architect of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres (where Christian Arabs killed Muslim Arabs), even though courts of law in both Tel Aviv and New York found such charges to be utterly without merit. I highly doubt the person who defaced my book was familiar with the latter facts.

In Israel’s short history, Ariel Sharon has probably been the single truly indispensable man. His country could use him how. So could ours.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com