Best Abe Lincoln Bio?

[FDRrocks]

I am about half way into a biography of Lincoln written by one Carl Sundberg and titles 'Abraham Lincoln The Prarie Years and The War Years'. I picked it up in the bargain bin at Borders (which might've been my first clue, but I also got 'Inside the Third Riech' by Albert Speer, which is very engaging), this book is not very good at all.

From what I have read Carl Sundberg was a poet foremost, which means his historical writing is very given to fallacie. At least 4 times a chapter a paragraph will have the words 'he/they/she might have' followed by a romantic depiction of what might've happened. He saps drama out of every other nuance he can. Given the whole aura of this book I feel that I cannot take all I read very seriously. I am going to have to follow this up with a serious biography.

What is that best one you guys have read?

[elperromagico]

1. What double referral?

;)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Hey, the Sandburg books on Lincoln are great. Try buying 1st

editions of them. They are well respected.

[FDRrocks]

3. Well from what I read...

The Prarie Years and War Years were originally multi-book works. I guess I bought the condensed version. I just cannot jive with his writing style, it is too whimsical for me. And I really hate those "he/she/they might've" lines and the dramatization. If you have read them I am sure you know what I mean.

[elperromagico]

4. The original is epic... I think it was five volumes.

[FDRrocks]

5. That is what I hear...

seriously, if my reading regiment was more strict, I wouldn't mind reading the whole thing. As it is, I just want the fact, the important stuff, I don't really care what who might've done or what color dress Mary Todd was wearing on Inaugaration day in March.

I'm sure it's a very good read, for the casual reader. His writing style is not by any means horrendous, but it isn't the most straight-forward, which is what I am currently into.

[elperromagico]

6. Poets rarely are straightforward.

Try the David Herbert Donald biography; it's pretty good.

[FDRrocks]

7. Double thanks

for the double referral :) gonna search it on Amazon right now!

edit: bookmarked the page, the reviews are stellar, thanks!

[pnorman]

8. I haven't read it yet, so I can't comment on the writing satyle.

But Sandburg was a Socialist, and whatever else that might imply, he would have taken history very seriously.

There's another book: "Lincoln: A Novel", by Gore Vidal. It was the second in his series of historical novels, beginning with "Burr", and followed by "1876". My own American history readings were mainly of Charles Beard & V. Parrington; later of Zinn. To the extent my historical base is "sound", every one of those historical novels rang true.

Here's the Amazon.com reviews of that book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375708766/ref=cm_rev_all_1/103-4718586-3751823?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews

pnorman
STAND UP, KEEP FIGHTING http://shows.implex.tv/wellstone/

[Laughing Mirror]

9. Gore Vidal's book brings Lincoln alive

Great book. Great read. Explores and explodes some of the myths that have arisen around the great man.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. Three or four volumes by Albert Jeremiah Beveridge

Published ca. 1928. Re-issued 1971.

Controversial as it is sympathetic to the South.

[MSchreader]

11. Try this site for references

Abraham Lincoln Online: http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln.html

Martin

[Padraig18]

12. I reccomend 'Lincoln: A Novel, by Gore Vidal

I'm somewhat of a Lincoln 'freak/scholar', and this is the best Lincoln bio I've ever run across. Although it's historical fiction, it bring President Lincoln and those around him to life, and is meticulously researched, i.e., the conversations could/likely did occur, etc. .

If I could only read one Lincoln book, this would be the one! :)

[pretzel4gore]

13. Stephen Oates biography of Abe was great

Stephen Oate's biography of Lincoln....and the Bruce Catton series on the civil war...are wonderful introductions to US history....both mention CLEMENT VALLADIGHAM!-- the epitome of the freeper. valladigham was a northern rabble rouser, a liar who used some action of Lincoln or the Republicans to rouse the wrath of the boorish stupid racist and cruel half wits of the era (iow, freepers)...
you'll love what Abe had done to him (lol!)
It's SO FUNNY hearing freepers say that Abe VIOLATED the constitution etc suppressing the rebellion... Abe was a 'dictat-or' they say...haha
the fact is, both Abe Lincoln, JFK, the Roosevelts (teddy too) were OURS.
Peter Dale Scott, in reference to the Kennedy assasination, mentioned the DICHOTOMY at the heart of the US political system, which became visible (to modern eyes) with the President's murder. The same thing can be applied to the Lincoln murder....the men who were responsible for it (Lincoln, like JFK, were in obvious mortal danger) are like a specter, constantly dragging at the social fabric, in service of the mad idea that 'survival of the fittest' (under god of course) is law and order in nature. The sheer hypocrisy of all this is best displayed in Sinclair Lewis's 'Babbitt'

[FDRrocks]

14. haha

Banishment to the Confederacy! That is great!

[DivinBreuvage]

16. Stephen B. Oates is one of my favorites.

He was one of the "talking heads" on the Ken Burns Civil War series (the white professor with glasses and a mustache). In addition to Lincoln, he has also written biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the great slave uprising leader Nat Turner, which should give you some idea of where his sympathies and interests lie. His To Purge This Land With Blood, on the greatest and most devoted of all abolitionists, the Ohioan John Brown, is perhaps the most balanced and insightful biography ever written on that divisive, complex figure.

He's also done a two-volume series on the Civil War (The Approaching Fury and The Whirlwind of War) which is particularly interesting because he has written it in the first person, from the perspective of numerous important figures such as Henry Clay, Lincoln, Grant, Jefferson Davis, and so on. It's very enlightening because it does such an excellent job of explaining how these figures perceived reality and why they took the stands and did the things they did.

I believe Oates' Lincoln biography was intended to be a good one-volume biography reflecting current knowledge about Lincoln, rather than breaking new ground. David Herbert Donald's book is excellent also, very in-depth, but he is very interested in showing that Lincoln was no friend of civil rights or black Americans, which causes him at times to slightly overstate his case.

[pretzel4gore]

17. there's some nasty Lincoln revisionist going around...

and naturally the local 'objective' media gave the pig hours to expound on Abe and promo his 'doorstopper'(book)
There was no use calling the station, i was in so enraged!
One truth i coulda pointed out about Abe, who lived in a white supremeist culture (i recall being appalled as a kid reading about british ship going up river in china INTENTIONALLY running over chinese junks for amusement of passengers!) was that he had Fredrick Douglass to the white house, and treated him as an equal; to me that said MR LINCOLN was a real gentleman.
I missed the Burns civil war series. I could not imagine the war being treated honestly, but if Oates was included.....hmmm, maybe I will rent/watch it.

[DivinBreuvage]

18. The war wasn't treated quite as honestly as it should have been, BUT

You'd be doing yourself a real disservice to miss it. I have watched it many times and can't count the number of genuinely moving moments therein. Every so often Ken Burns manages to put together a blend of music, visual material, and contemporary eloquence that really brings home the humanity of the people who went through that experience, or the unimaginable upheaval that the war brought. Some of the passages I can still recite verbatim, or nearly so, and I haven't seen the documentary in years. A few of my favorites: commentary on the northern lights appearing after the horrid Union defeat at Fredericksburg; Herman Melville's poem on the Battle of the Wilderness; and the famous Sullivan Ballou letter, which you have absolutely got to hear! There are even a couple of early voice recordings from people who had been slaves in their youth.

The problem is, the filmmakers are not groundbreakers but summarizers, and so much of Civil War literature is biased toward the South it is very hard for summarizers to escape its influence. The presence in the documentary of the charismatic and engaging Shelby Foote, who is decidely partisan, didn't help either. He completely overshadowed all the other speakers on the show and I think his influence on Burns' narrative is strong, and shows.

An interesting book on this very subject is Ken Burns' 'The Civil War', edited by Robert Brent Toplin. It contains a number of essays from scholars, most of whom vent their pet peeves with the documentary, along with rebuttals from Burns and C. Vann Woodward. According to Woodward and Burns (and I believe them), they invited scholars to review the initial draft and help them improve it, but all the scholars did was start pissing and moaning about how bad it all was and didn't offer much of anything constructive. At any rate, some excellent points are raised by them in the book, so you could use that to counterbalance the documentary.

[DivinBreuvage]

19. Incidentally, you mentioned Lincoln's treatment of Douglass...

I'd like to share a couple of stories about John Brown, just because he's one of my heroes.

John Brown grew up in Ohio's "Western Reserve", which was heavily settled by Connecticut immigrants and the abolitionist stronghold of the state. But for many of these folks abolition was a mere moral principle utterly divorced from any genuine love for the human beings who suffered from slavery. When John Brown was a boy his father Owen (who later played a role in the founding of Oberlin college) abandoned his church in disgust because of the way he had been ostracized for bringing black friends down to sit with him in his pew.

As an adult, John Brown himself moved to a farming community for former slaves established in New York state by a rich philanthropist (later implicated in Brown's Harper's Ferry raid) so he could help them get established in their new lives as free men. While there he was visited by the novelist Richard Henry Dana, who himself supported abolitionist principles. Dana was genuinely offended to learn that John Brown not only allowed black folks to sit at his table (and expected Dana to dine side-by-side with them) but that he respectfully addressed them as "Mister So-and-So" and treated them with the same courtesy as if they had been white.

Incidentally, Douglass himself was a friend of John Brown, and later said that John Brown's love for the slave exceeded his own. "Mine was as the candle light, his was as the blazing sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him." (quoting from memory, may not be verbatim).

I think you raise an excellent point, that some historical figures such as Lincoln may not live up to the standards of some folks on DU in terms of ideological purity, but that in terms of their time their behavior was remarkably liberal and enlightened (some more so than others, of course). Also, I think, a lot of people fail to understand that Lincoln, as you point out, had to be very careful in choosing his words in the racist society of antebellum America, and believe that his political soundbites necessarily reflected his genuine inner feelings. Just pop over to this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=285357&mesg_id=285357

to see how people are damning Howard Dean for doing exactly the same thing!

[elcondor]

15. "Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald

is the best one I've read. I'm a big Lincoln buff and from my experience with Sandburg's books, they are a good read, but shouldn't be taken as a totally factual account of Lincoln's life. Sandburg took a lot of liberties with his life, especially the early (or "prairie") years.

Here's a link to Donald's book's page on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/068482535X/qid=1072382057//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i6_xgl14/104-7296515-9467102?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[DivinBreuvage]

20. Albert Speer is very seductive.

It's very difficult to find an interviewer who talked with him for any length of time and didn't come under his sway, just the same power his "unrequited love" (Hitler) was supposed to have had. Gitta Sereny, in Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, certainly came under that spell, as did I myself after reading his book and hers.

A good counter to this is the Dutch writer Dan van der Vat's book The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer, who met Speer only briefly before the latter died and thus was not affected.

[fujiyama]

21. Which biography of Lincoln...

was it that was recommended that Bush read, by Clinton before he left office?

I think this was on an interview by Dan Rather a month or so before he left office. I also recall that after Clinton recommended the read, sales of the bio shot up.