Learn About the Life of Abraham Lincoln

A number of new books offer new perspectives to celebrate his bicentennial birthday

December 18, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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In Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860 - 1861, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer (who is also cochairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Committee) looks at the interim period between Lincoln's election and his inauguration. Holzer also has edited The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy From 1860 to Now (Library of America, $40), a wide-ranging collection that includes the views of everyone from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Leo Tolstoy to—yes—President-elect Barack Obama.

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Abraham Lincoln,
history,
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Iconoclasts are everywhere these days. It’s not surprising to see them take a few pokes at Lincoln. DiLorenzo, to whom Antonio refers in the previous post, is one of the more visible and enthusiastic. To hear him tell it, Lincoln was – just for starters - largely indifferent to the plight of slaves and blithely unfaithful to the Constitution. While Lincoln, were he alive today, would be the first to insist that he be remembered with all of his flaws intact, those flaws were not of the nature norof the scale DiLorenzo claims. If anything, his flaws may make Lincoln even more endearing. As for the rest – well, I think DiLorenzo takes facts outside of their context and misses whole layers of complexity. I’m not suggesting one avoid his books – just that, after doing so, one ought to read several of the more well-researched books that approach Lincoln with more facts and a more nuanced analysis of those facts. Jordan Camenker

Jordan camenker of FL 1:18AM June 06, 2010

check out the work of Thomas DiLorenzo.

antonio of NJ 10:27AM December 24, 2008

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