Leadership Talks with Gen. (Ret.) David H. Petraeus | Elizabeth Samet on Ulysses S. Grant

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 Grant’s landmark memoir, and expands the Civil War backdrop against which this 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. General Petraeus joins her to discuss this fascinating work and the insights it sheds upon a great American leader.