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Personal Memoirs Of U.S. Grant, And Alternative Accounts Of Lee's Surrender At Appomattox, George R. Goethals

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

It is somewhat troubling that as we try to understand leaders and leadership we are confronted with the problem that our knowledge of central historical events is highly subject to the differing perspectives of various scholars. What can we know? How can we know it?

This chapter considers these questions by examining the implications of a particular variation on the general problem of differing historical perspectives. That is, how do we weigh autobiographical accounts of events by the actors themselves? Is there something distinctive about these accounts, or are they best thought of as just one more rendering of history, …