Abraham Lincoln book reviews: New and Old

From 2009 onwards the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Lincoln book submissions will be at a peak. According to one cataloguer, President Lincoln is about the fourth most popular subject ever written about after Jesus Christ, Shakespeare, and the Virgin Mary. A New York publisher wrote that a surefire bestseller would be a book about Abraham Lincoln but there would have to be something new to say. If that litmus test were applied to most of the rush of books, it is likely that there would only be various forms of retreads of the Lincoln anthology. Now it is not to say that the Lincoln story isn’t interesting because it is. It’s like the same story being told by different people. It is often entertaining but rarely new. Most of what has been written about Abraham Lincoln that would register as truly new comes from the period between 1850 and 1912. In fact, if one goes back to the many Lincoln books that are now in the public domain, it’s the likes of Carpenter, Tarbell, Sandburg, Crook, Herndon, etc. and the basic writings of Lincoln himself that make up the core of the Lincoln anthology.
Some people point to David Herbert Donald as the quintessential Lincoln author. In Lincoln (1995) Donald takes the aforementioned source books and restates their efforts in his slightly varied style. It is not new either in release or in historical information, but it did win a Pulitzer.
The descendants of the Meserve legacy, the Kunhardts follow up their Abraham Lincoln book and mini-series of eight years past with a new effort for the Bicentennial, “Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon”. It is slick and tries to capture the essence of the period with photographs. A four hour miniseries is set for PBS for next year based on the book. It seems that the idea is to frame the reworking of the Lincoln legend into a Civil War and 19th century motif. The most obvious recapitulation is the almost wholesale presentation of the thumbnail view of all the black and white Lincoln photographs at the back of the book. It has been done before by Lloyd Ostendorf in his books "Abraham Lincoln, Every Known Photograph” and “Lincoln’s Photographs - A Complete Album”. Maybe because Lloyd Ostendorf is no longer around to defend his presentation it seemed like a good idea, so why not use it. Nothing truly new here though.
One book that does bring an unusual and novel approach to the Lincoln legacy is “Color of Lincoln” being released on the Bicentennial birthday of Lincoln. Bryan Eaton has faithfully reproduced the Abraham Lincoln pictures and photographs in full color. While most of the Abraham Lincoln photographs do not survive in their original form, the colorization process has revitalized the Lincoln photographic album. While the original black and whites have been restored in most cases and then turned into realistic color photos, the Color of Lincoln still retains artifacts like Samuel Aschuler’s thumbprint mistake on the Lincoln portrait of 1858. It is not only the photo that is refreshing, but the essence of the information. The chapter on Gettysburg is vivid in its ability to place the reader in the scene. After reading it, one realizes that every reenactment of the Gettysburg Address is wrong and the event is captured here from the boards squeaking beneath Lincoln’s feet, to his elongated pauses and tears at the end of the address. If one wants something new, if it is only the pictorial renditions,this Abraham Lincoln book is worth viewing.
“Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln” was written by John Stauffer, a professor of American civilization at Harvard University. Stauffer brings last year’s Lincoln Prize winning book to the Bicentennial focusing on the interaction of two men famous in their day and how the issue of race clouded their first meeting and influenced their professional interactions in the 1860s. The intricacies of race relations and the struggle for Emancipation plays out in the interactions between these two famous men and their path from adversaries to respectful acquaintance.
Eminent Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer is the most prolific of the Lincoln authors. In his latest work “Lincoln President-elect : Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861, Mr. Holzer shows Lincoln’s campaign to hold secession and the growth of slavery in check in the few areas left after his election. During this most dangerous time, with the White House in transition, the ineffectiveness of President Buchanan and the president-elect, Lincoln with no constitutional authority, Lincoln used the future ascendency to the bully pulpit as a tool to limit the worst possible outcome of his election. The focus on the role of a President-Elect shows that while Lincoln’s pragmatic side acknowledged the almost inevitable nature of the secession, his optimism and personal efforts were toward the preservation of the Union and the limitation of the escalation of slavery. Lincoln’s transformation into a Presidential figure is captured with clarity and precision under the masterful guidance of Mr. Holzer. Mr. Holzer has captured in print the blueprint of a President-elect that seems to have been followed by President-elect Obama In 2008.
Finally, although it is not new for the Bicentennial, Doris Kearns Goodwin created a novel approach to the retelling of previously published history. Bringing together the Lincoln cabinet from its days of competition for the office of the President to the interactions of the nineteenth century Cabinet of Lincoln, Ms. Goodwin has done that novel thing that can only be imitated. Much like Ken Burn’s introduction of the pan and scan documentary, Ms. Goodwin’s in depth personal analyses of men and their interactions at all levels is a masterful approach that will be referenced using the “Team of Rivals” as the primary identifier of this multi-faceted analysis of political environments.
If one is going to examine the Lincoln literary works during the , it is best go back to the source or look for something completely new.

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