Download or read book 100 Essential Lincoln Books written by Michael Burkhimer and published by Cumberland House Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few politicians have fascinated the American people as much as Abraham Lincoln. The 1990s witnessed heightened interest in the sixteenth president and a flood of books about him that continues to the present. A recent tally indicates that at least 14,000 books and pamphlets have been written about him. The last guide to the best Lincoln books was produced in 1946. Since then several thousand more titles have been published. As a result, anyone interested in reading about him faces a daunting task in seeking out the books that offer the keenest insights into the man and the legend and lore that surround him. Michael Burkhimer's 100 Essential Lincoln Books offers a guide to this vast body of Lincoln literature. He chooses books that are indispensable for both book collectors and readers intent on learning more about Lincoln. The importance of each work is outlined with an emphasis on how it has contributed to Lincoln studies. Burkhimer's criteria for selection are based on the book's originality, sources, interpretations, writing style, and overall contribution. Titles are arranged chronologically in order of their first publication, ranging from 1866 (Francis B. Carpenter's Six Months at the While House with Abraham Lincoln) to 2002 (William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues). The recent resurgence of interest in Lincoln is reflected in that almost one-third of the books described here have appeared since 1990. To further aid the curious Lincoln reader, each title is classified under a general heading, such as assassination, biography, family and genealogy, and reminiscences. Indexes of authors and headings are also included.
Download or read book Lincoln s Greatest Case The River the Bridge and the Making of America written by Brian McGinty and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-02-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight. In May of 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge, unalterably changing the course of American transportation history. Within a year, long-simmering tensions between powerful steamboat interests and burgeoning railroads exploded, and the nation’s attention, absorbed by the Dred Scott case, was riveted by a new civil trial. Dramatically reenacting the Effie Afton case—from its unlikely inception, complete with a young Abraham Lincoln’s soaring oratory, to the controversial finale—this “masterful” (Christian Science Monitor) account gives us the previously untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight.
Download or read book Lincoln written by Fred Kaplan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the literary life of the sixteenth president explores the ways in which his views were shaped by classic literature and how he used language as a vehicle for complex ideas and an instrument of change in both political and personal arenas.
Download or read book Giant in the Shadows written by Jason Emerson and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giant in the Shadows is the definitive biography of Robert T. Lincoln (1843-1926), the oldest son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln and their only child to live past age eighteen. Emerson, after nearly ten years of research, draws upon previously unavailable materials to cover Robert Lincoln's entire life in detail.
Download or read book The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2012-06-13 with total page 988 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of all American presidents, left us a vast legacy of writings, some of which are among the most famous in our history. Lincoln was a marvelous writer—from the humblest letter to his great speeches, including his inaugural addresses, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. His sentences were so memorably crafted that many resonate across the years. "Fourscore and seven years ago," begins the Gettysburg Address, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In 1940, the prolific author and historian Philip Van Doren Stern produced this volume as a guide to Lincoln's life through his writings. Stern's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" is a full biography of the man and includes a detailed chronology. Stern has collected all the essential texts of Lincoln's public life, from his first public address—a stump speech in New Salem, Illinois, in 1832 for an election he went on to lose—to his last piece of public writing, a pass to a congressman who was to visit the president the day after Lincoln went to Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865. Some 275 such documents are collected and placed in their historical context. Together with the "Life" and the Introduction, "Lincoln in His Writings," by noted historian Allan Nevins, they give a full and vivid picture of Abraham Lincoln.
Download or read book Abraham Lincoln written by Michael Burlingame and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 659 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as the definitive portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame's impressive two-volume biography has been masterfully abridged and revised. Sixteenth president of the United States, the Great Emancipator, and a surpassingly eloquent champion of national unity, freedom, and democracy, Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most studied and admired of all Americans. Michael Burlingame's astonishing Abraham Lincoln: A Life, an updated, condensed version of the 2,000-page two-volume set that The Atlantic hailed as one of the five best books of 2009, offers fresh interpretations of this endlessly fascinating American leader. Based on deep research in unpublished sources as well as newly digitized sources, this work reveals how Lincoln's character and personality were the North's secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variables that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity and a fully individuated man whose influence remains unrivaled in the history of American public life. Burlingame chronicles Lincoln's childhood and early development, romantic attachments and losses, his love of learning, legal training, and courtroom career as well as his political ambition, his term as congressman in the late 1840s, and his serious bouts of depression in early adulthood. Burlingame recounts, in fresh detail, the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln marriage and traces the mounting moral criticism of slavery that revived his political career and won this Springfield lawyer the presidency in 1860. This abridgement delivers Burlingame's signature insight into Lincoln as a young man, a father, and a politician. Lincoln speaks to us not only as a champion of freedom, democracy, and national unity but also as a source of inspiration. Few have achieved his historical importance, but many can profit from his personal example, encouraged by the knowledge that despite a lifetime of troubles, he became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity. His presence and his leadership inspired his contemporaries; his life story will do the same for generations to come.
Download or read book Commander in Chief written by Geoffrey Perret and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2008-01-22 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq Made The Commander In Chief and Foretell the Future of America This is a story of ever-expanding presidential powers in an age of unwinnable wars. Harry Truman and Korea, Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, George W. Bush and Iraq: three presidents, three ever broader interpretations of the commander in chief clause of the Constitution, three unwinnable wars, and three presidential secrets. Award-winning presidential biographer and military historian Geoffrey Perret places these men and events in the larger context of the post-World War II world to establish their collective legacy: a presidency so powerful it undermines the checks and balances built into the Constitution, thereby creating a permanent threat to the Constitution itself. In choosing to fight in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, Truman, Johnson, and Bush alike took counsel of their fears, ignored the advice of the professional military and major allies, and were influenced by facts kept from public view. Convinced that an ever-more powerful commander in chief was the key to victory, they misread the moment. Since World War II wars have become tests of stamina rather than strength, and more likely than not they sow the seeds of future wars. Yet recent American presidents have chosen to place their country in the forefront of fighting them. In the course of doing so, however, they gave away the secret of American power—for all its might, the United States can be defeated by chaos and anarchy.
Download or read book Abraham Lincoln written by Carl Sandburg and published by Sterling Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the life of the Civil War president, detailing his childhood, his education, career as a lawyer and legislator, his marriage, political campaigns, presidential years, and assassination.
Download or read book Six Encounters with Lincoln written by Elizabeth Brown Pryor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award from The Civil War Round Table of New York “Fascinating reading. . .this book eerily reflects some of today’s key issues.” – The New York Times Book Review From an award-winning historian, an engrossing look at how Abraham Lincoln grappled with the challenges of leadership in an unruly democracy An awkward first meeting with U.S. Army officers, on the eve of the Civil War. A conversation on the White House portico with a young cavalry sergeant who was a fiercely dedicated abolitionist. A tense exchange on a navy ship with a Confederate editor and businessman. In this eye-opening book, Elizabeth Brown Pryor examines six intriguing, mostly unknown encounters that Abraham Lincoln had with his constituents. Taken together, they reveal his character and opinions in unexpected ways, illustrating his difficulties in managing a republic and creating a presidency. Pryor probes both the political demons that Lincoln battled in his ambitious exercise of power and the demons that arose from the very nature of democracy itself: the clamorous diversity of the populace, with its outspoken demands. She explores the trouble Lincoln sometimes had in communicating and in juggling the multiple concerns that make up being a political leader; how conflicted he was over the problem of emancipation; and the misperceptions Lincoln and the South held about each other. Pryor also provides a fascinating discussion of Lincoln’s fondness for storytelling and how he used his skills as a raconteur to enhance both his personal and political power. Based on scrupulous research that draws on hundreds of eyewitness letters, diaries, and newspaper excerpts, Six Encounters with Lincoln offers a fresh portrait of Lincoln as the beleaguered politician who was not especially popular with the people he needed to govern with, and who had to deal with the many critics, naysayers, and dilemmas he faced without always knowing the right answer. What it shows most clearly is that greatness was not simply laid on Lincoln’s shoulders like a mantle, but was won in fits and starts.
Download or read book LIFE LINCOLN written by The Editors of LIFE and published by Time Inc. Books. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the editors of LIFE bring readers everything that has been left to us from the life of one of history's most iconic figures. His pictures, actions, words in his speeches and his private letters are analyzed and pointed inward toward the person, to help us understand the man: the heart and soul of the man. This book is about the artifacts that are left us all these years later (letters, speeches and particularly pictures) — things that LIFE can show that allow us to know this man more intimately. And so we, with help from experts and several famous commentators, will show them in our pages, and lead the reader to the clues about Lincoln's essence. Includes chapters such as: "Lincoln Pictured," an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A narrative by Allen C. Guelzo, explaining the man and his image — how the image reflects the true man "Who Was Mathew Brady?" — the famous photographer, his life and times, his truths and deceptions (before and after shots from the Gettysburg battlefield, detailing how he moved things around — even bodies — for dramatic impact) The words of Lincoln, in an artifact presentation with removable letters and speeches on archival paper that bring the reader back to the times "The Camera and the White House" — A fascinating chapter on American Presidents and their visual image — Thomas McAvoy's secret snaps of FDR, FDR hiding his legs, JFK's manipulation of photography taken of him, etc. The "book within a book" — the likes of David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Richard Norton Smith, Walter Isaacson, Jon Meachem, Macklemore, Brad Pitt, Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Gay Talese, Tom Wolf and more in answer to the question "When you see Lincoln's face, what do you see?"
Download or read book Lincoln and the Fight for Peace written by John Avlon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking, revelatory history of Abraham Lincoln's plan to secure a just and lasting peace after the Civil War-a vision that inspired future presidents as well as the world's most famous peacemakers, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a story of war and peace, race and reconciliation
Download or read book A Just and Generous Nation written by Harold Holzer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our sixteenth president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue, Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity. Lincoln firmly believed that the government's primary role was to ensure that all Americans had the opportunity to better their station in life. As president, he worked tirelessly to enshrine this ideal within the federal government. He funded railroads and canals, supported education, and, most importantly, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which opened the door for former slaves to join white Americans in striving for self-improvement. In our own age of unprecedented inequality, A Just and Generous Nation reestablishes Lincoln's legacy as the protector not just of personal freedom but of the American dream itself.
Download or read book The Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery written by Eric Foner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.
Download or read book Lincoln written by David Herbert Donald and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s life and presidency. Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln’s character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union—in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.
Download or read book Ways and Means written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal “Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Download or read book Every Drop of Blood written by Edward Achorn and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vividly rendered Civil War history presents “a lively guided tour of Washington during the 24 hours or so around Lincoln’s swearing-in” (Adam Goodheart, Washington Post). By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had left intractable wounds on the nation. Tens of thousands crowded Washington’s Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term—and witness what was perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history. Lincoln stunned the nation by arguing that both sides had been wrong, and that the war’s unimaginable horrors might have been God’s just verdict on the national sin of slavery. In Every Drop of Blood, Edward Achorn reveals the nation’s capital on that momentous day—with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians. Swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln, a host of characters are brought to life, from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor to the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers’ advocate Clara Barton and African American leader Frederick Douglass to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth. In indelible scenes, Achorn captures the frenzy and division in the nation’s capital at this crucial moment in America’s history. His story offers new understanding of our great national crisis, and echoes down the decades to resonate in our own time.
Download or read book Lincoln in the Bardo written by George Saunders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented Named One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end? “A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review “A masterpiece.”—Zadie Smith
