Posted on 06/15/2010 12:04:20 PM PDT by winstonwolf33
I'm planning on reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln for a nice non-fiction change of pace. As you can imagine, there's so many Lincoln biographies out there I wouldn't know where to begin! Certainly, I would like to begin with the cream of the crop, but which one would it be? Even if I do a search in Amazon.com for Abraham Lincoln biographies sorted by five-star average customer reviews, a truckload of titles pop out.
Here's just a few of those titles:
Lincoln and His Admirals by Craig L. Symonds
Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage) by Douglas L. Wilson
Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Jr. Philip B. Kunhardt, Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and David Herbert Donald
The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words by Ronald C. White
Lincoln as I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies by Harold Holzer
A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours by W. Emerson Reck
The Physical Lincoln Complete by John G. Sotos
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & the War Years (Library of the Presidents) by Carl Sandburg
The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America's Most Reviled President by Larry Tagg
Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Doreen Rappaport and Kadir Nelson
Lincoln's Other White House: The Untold Story of the Man and His Presidency by Elizabeth Smith Brownstein
Abraham Lincoln For The Defense by Warren Bull (Paperback - June 9, 2003)
Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life : The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik
Abraham Lincoln: The Man & His Faith by G. Frederick Owen
Tell Me of Lincoln: Memories of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Life in Old New York by James Edward Kelly, William B. Styple, and James E. Kelly
The Essential Lincoln by Tim Davidson
With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union by William C. Harris (Paperback - June 24, 1999)
So after a while, I pretty much gave up on Amazon and decided to just jump in here and see if I can get some feedback from my fellow Freepers. Any recommendations?
There was of course the option of respecting the self-determination of the Southern people, especially considering it was no different then that exercised in the 1770s.
But Lincoln couldn’t get that because he was hellbent on power and couldn’t stand the thought that anyone didn’t want to be under his benevolent rule.
Amen!
ML/NJ
When it comes to shit, who better than you would know?
When Lincoln abandoned the train, he got off secretly but let his wife and children continue on on the train he feared would be attacked. That takes a special kind of guy. ML/NJ
“When it comes to shit, who better than you would know?”
No one. That was my point. I can recognize it the minute I see it and yours is weak. That was why I told you how weak you were. You just get weaker and weaker, man. Weaker and weaker.
There was a lot of hoopla about Ronald C. White's thick new biography last year. You could take a look and see if it's really that good.
People have also had good things to say about Benjamin Thomas's and Lord Charnwood's biographies, but you'd probably want to start with something more recent to see the latest state of scholarship.
So simply sending supplies to a fort that was deeded property of the United States was provocation enough to launch a bombardment that lasted 34 hours and fired 3000 shells at the fort, fortunately killing no one despite the Confederates’ best efforts? Can you imagine if presidents today acted as irrationally as Jefferson Davis?
Not bad if you are a confirmed leftist.
Yeah, I've also heard that book has a liberal slant.
Okay, the leading contenders so far, based on this post, would have to be: With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates, Lincoln by David Herbert Donald, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years by Carl Sandburg, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words by Ronald C. White, and The Living Lincoln: The Man and His Times In His Own Words by Paul M Angle.
Thanks everyone for their contributions! (although I'm quite surprised my post generated all that Lincoln-bashing. Who knew?)
What say you, Minneapolis Steve? Any recommendations you've gleaned from your Quarterly Reviews over the years?
That's not true at all. Lincoln and Lamon were the only ones on the train and were traveling separately. Mrs. Lincoln and the children had remained in Harrisburg and didn't join Lincoln until later that afternoon, arriving by a separate train. David Herbert Donald details it in his biography on Lincoln
It's a very readable book. I suggest you read it for yourself and decide on your own if it has a slant of any kind.
If it were true, would you agree with me that Lincoln was a scumbag?
ML/NJ
If it isn't true will that change your opinion on Lincoln's scumbagness?
A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography by Benjamin P. Thomas and Michael Burlingame, and Abraham Lincoln by Baron Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood are also in the running. :P
“Thanks everyone for their contributions! (although I’m quite surprised my post generated all that Lincoln-bashing. Who knew?)”
Well, as Mr. Truman once said...”I don’t give ‘em hell, I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
That’s the interesting thing about war and ideology...it usually exists on both sides, motivates people and never dies off. So it was in the first Civil War, so it would be in the second. It just waits for a chance to come around again.
If the Federal government decides to impose its will on Conservatives, there might be quite a few strange bedfellows, I think.
A state's right to hold men in bondage is already a memory, and a bad one.
“A state’s right to hold men in bondage is already a memory, and a bad one.”
True. A State’s right to disallow foreign invasion or a complete enslavement to totalitarianism is not going to be pretty either. Hopefully it won’t take two hundred years to end it, like slavery. Probably be just as brutal, though. This one we are bringing on ourselves, though, which is really tragic. Slavery was here long before the US existed. All things considered, being enslaved by socialism will be no day at the beach, either, huh? Or, should we just roll with it, because that is what the government wants?
Wonder if there will be draft riots in the Northern cities?
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