Elizabeth D. Samet – författare

Elizabeth D. Samet brings to this anthology her profound experiences as a teacher and her belief in the vital role of the humanities in cultivating leaders. Here, Samet explores the connection between literature and leadership. She looks at whether leaders are born or whether they are made, and the roles that creativity and imagination play in developing strategic thinkers in business, law, politics, medicine and beyond. Incisive section introductions focus on the skills and qualities that distinguish the unforgettable leaders who come to life in the selections. Readers of Leadership will enjoy its sheer variety: Machiavelli and Milosz, Douglass and Didion are a sampling of the 102 writers and works included. At the same time, they will enter a thought-provoking conversation that is both ancient and crucially current.

A new Norton Anthology illuminates how literature can build character and foster critical-thinking skills for future leaders in business, law, politics, medicine, and beyond.

This book highlights obedience as an American cultural motif by examining the ways in which citizens understand and dramatize the struggle between autonomy and allegiance. Willing Obedience tells the story of Americans who worked out the simultaneous demands of liberty and obedience in fiction, military memoir, and political writing from the Revolution through the nineteenth century. In contrast to the European model of a subject's blind obedience to a monarch, Americans imagined an allegiance that preserved autonomy even as they consented to the constraints of a new republic. In particular, the book considers the case of the soldier, whose surprisingly complex relationship to authority is in fact representative of the situation of all citizens in a republic.

What is American courage? What role does this virtue play in today’s fractured country? Are traditional ideals of bravery, dedication, and self-sacrifice still relevant? These are among the questions asked by Elizabeth Samet, author of Soldier’s Heart. Demonstrating a deep love of literature and history, Samet reveals the way that courage has long anchored America’s collective thought. She finds courage in the lives of athletes and soldiers; in the writings of the Founders, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, and others; in the war movies she watched with her father, a veteran of World War II; in the Marvel universe; and in the literature she teaches. Using spirited interactions with her students as a springboard, she proposes that courage of body, mind, and spirit remains central to the American experiment. Samet’s work is a unique journey through reading that redefines our concept of courage and paves the way toward a unified future.