The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
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- $33.99
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- $33.99
Publisher Description
With kaleidoscopic, trenchant, path-breaking insights, Elizabeth D. Samet has produced the most ambitious edition of Ulysses Grant’s Memoirs yet published.
One hundred and thirty-three years after its 1885 publication by Mark Twain, Elizabeth Samet has annotated this lavish edition of Grant’s landmark memoir, and expands the Civil War backdrop against which this monumental American life is typically read. No previous edition combines such a sweep of historical and cultural contexts with the literary authority that Samet, an English professor obsessed with Grant for decades, brings to the table.
Whether exploring novels Grant read at West Point or presenting majestic images culled from archives, Samet curates a richly annotated, highly collectible edition that will fascinate Civil War buffs. The edition also breaks new ground in its attack on the “Lost Cause” revisionism that still distorts our national conversation about the legacy of the Civil War. Never has Grant’s transformation from tanner’s son to military leader been more insightfully and passionately explained than in this timely edition, appearing on the 150th anniversary of Grant’s 1868 presidential election.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
West Point professor Samet (Soldier's Heart) pulls off a herculean scholarly achievement in her annotation of Grant's classic autobiography. Her valuable introduction places Grant's memoirs in the autobiographical tradition that starts with the likes of Julius Caesar and has found more modern incarnations in Joan Didion and James Baldwin. She also explores Grant's literary influences, which included popular 19th-century writers like Edward Bulwer Lytton and Washington Irving and religious leader John Wesley. Footnotes add color by fleshing out individuals mentioned in passing, add context by expanding on events that Grant elides (such as an anti-Semitic order he issued in 1862), and add varied perspectives by quoting accounts of African-American soldiers (one such passage discusses the self-respect freed slaves gained in soldiering) and other generals. Samet's sources are wide-ranging, from classical writers like Herodotus to Toni Morrison (Samet quotes her description of the black experience immediately postwar, from Beloved) and Monty Python (deriding the practice of paroling enemy soldiers, who then returned to fight again, as "the kind of chivalric inanity satirized so brilliantly in Monty Python and the Holy Grail"). The end result is a very rich reading experience that highlights unexpected connections between events in the text, its historical moment, and its connections to larger cultural themes. Samet accomplishes the rare feat of creating accessible annotations that are as fascinating and enlightening as the text they are meant to enrich.
