The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (The Annotated Books)

by Ulysses S. Grant, Elizabeth D. Samet (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631492457
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	11/27/2018
Series:	The Annotated Books
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1152
Sales rank:	21,433
File size:	195 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Elizabeth D. Samet received her BA from Harvard and her PhD in English literature from Yale. She is the author of No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America (Macmillan); and Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point (FSG & Picador), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest and was named one of The New York Time's 100 Notable Books of 2007; and Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers, and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776–1898 (Stanford UP). Her essays and reviews have been published in various venues, including The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic. Samet is a professor of English at West Point. She speaks often to both civilian and military audiences on the role of literature in shaping future military officers, and she was a member of the Army Chief of Staff's 2011–2012 Task Force on Leader Development. She has appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, and the BBC World Service.

Editorial Reviews

11/15/2018

On the heels of John F. Marszalek's The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant comes Samet's new annotated edition, providing the same full work but with an emphasis on identifying individuals and referencing American literature. Included are intriguing and useful illustrations and maps as well as a valuable bibliography. Samet offers a helpful introduction and epilog that set soldier and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant's writing within the context of American literature and autobiography as well as current debates on interpreting the Civil War in popular culture. The author also suggests a methodology for reading a battle, such as Shiloh, as a way to understand not only Grant's rendering of specific conflicts but also military battle writing generally. While these interpretations enhance the original memoirs, this new edition does not surpass or supplant Marszalek's edition in copiousness and utility. VERDICT Libraries that want the full complement of Grant's works will profit from Samet's edition; those who own Marszalek's still have the best to date.—Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal

★ 09/24/2018
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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"There is so much there... A tanner’s son, failing at so much, turned savior of his country. A slaveholder turned mass emancipator. The warrior transformed into a warrior-poet."

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Grant's Personal Memoirs

"An enthralling, brilliant, illuminating—and unique—contribution that helps return Ulysses S. Grant to the pinnacle on which he belongs. Professor Elizabeth Samet’s Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is literary and historical scholarship at its very finest – providing a lyrical, exceptionally readable addition to Grant’s extraordinarily clear, forthright, and unsentimental Personal Memoirs."

General David Petraeus

"Elizabeth Samet’s annotations to Grant’s Memoirs are a marvel, brilliantly situating the text not only in military history, but also in a broader literary and cultural context. The many admirers of the memoir will find this an essential addition to the text, one that ranges from Xenophon to Gertrude Stein, from Islamic commentaries on the sacking of cities to a wealth of contemporary photographs, paintings, and maps."

Phil Klay

★ 2018-08-13

A new edition, with thorough commentary, of the memoirs of an American Caesar—and indeed, a book long reckoned to be America's version of The Gallic Wars.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1855) began his military career without much promise but distinguished himself in combat in the Mexican-American War, where, as he recounts, he came into contact with many of his future opponents in the Civil War. His legendary service in the Western theater of operations, and later as commander of the entire Union Army, led to his election and re-election as president, but all that did not save him from being bilked by a business partner—and thus this memoir, which none other than Mark Twain convinced him to publish to provide for his soon-to-be-widow, since Grant was already ill with cancer. As editor Samet (English/West Point; No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America, 2014, etc.) notes, rumors immediately emerged that Twain had ghostwritten it. In fact, Grant labored endlessly on this massive book, which, writes Samet, "is the artifact that does justice to his achievement as the leader of an army that preserved a nation and emancipated four million people." Grant's writing is simple and unadorned, though those who read between the lines will see that he is nothing if not politically astute. His account of the political troubles of William Tecumseh Sherman for offering the same mercies as he had to the vanquished Confederate forces is a model of understatement—though, he adds, "the feeling against Sherman died out very rapidly, and it was not many weeks before he was restored to the fullest confidence of the American people." If anything, Samet might be criticized, gently, for being too vigorous in annotation; an early disquisition on the French and Indian War, for instance, is orders of magnitude longer than the aside of Grant's that prompted it, and it begs to be reined in. Nonetheless, for Civil War buffs, this is a must-read.

This is the edition that serious students of the Civil War, and Grant's role in it, will want. Indispensable.

Kirkus Reviews