Join us as author and historian, Louis L. Picone, uncovers how Grant’s curiosity and humility shone, revealing the man behind the myth.

In May 1877, Ulysses S. Grant, newly departed from two terms in the White House, embarked on an extraordinary three-year journey that defined a pivotal moment in the Gilded Age. Grant’s odyssey spanned continents and led him to uncharted terrain for an American president. He scaled Mount Vesuvius, sailed the Nile, rode elephants in India, and strolled the streets of Sicily.

Louis L. Picone is a best-selling and award-winning author whose works include Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon and The President Is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond. He serves as chairman of the committee for the Grover Cleveland Presidential Library at President Grover Cleveland’s birthplace in Caldwell, NJ. Picone also holds a master’s degree in history and teaches at William Paterson University

He has lectured extensively on American presidents at institutions including the General Grant National Memorial, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and the White House Historical Association. He has been featured on C-SPAN, BBC News, NPR, the Travel Channel, and in Time magazine and the Washington Post.