A. Lincoln: A Biography

5 Comments

1. Cory Geurts
   

   Review by Cory Geurts for A. Lincoln: A Biography
   Rating:
   What a refreshing read and pleasant experience this book is. Mr. White has the ability to convey so much information in an intelligent yet clear and easy-to-understand style. White takes the time to explain words or concepts that otherwise would send most readers to the dictionary. He couples this friendly presentation with all of the complexity and coverage of any other well-written presidential biography.

   The author obviously possesses a wide-ranging and thorough knowledge of President Lincoln, his times and his presidency. As a biographical text about Abraham Lincoln, White’s “A. Lincoln” provides great detail without sacrificing the larger picture.

   Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” is an excellent book about the history of and inner-workings of Lincoln and his cabinet – and I highly recommend her book. But White’s “A. Lincoln” simply blows “Team of Rivals” out of the water in terms of being a well-focused yet richly detailed historical biography.

   Here are a few things I didn’t see mentioned in the editorial reviews praising this book: White liberally shares photographs, maps, illustrations, documents, even signatures of key characters. Unlike many history/biography books, these are not confined to a few glossy pages in the middle of the book, but appear frequently throughout the text, and really help give depth to the places, events, people, and times. This book includes an extensive notes section, the most thorough bibliography I’ve ever seen in a single-volume biography, and a 28-page index.

   If you visit this book on randomhouse.com, you can find a link to Mr. White’s personal web site. On his website, I found Mr. White’s Speaking Dates calendar, which includes a visit here (Portland, Oregon) next week at the Oregon Historical Society. I will be there and I am looking forward to meeting and hearing from Mr. White.
   

2. Johnny
   

   Review by Johnny for A. Lincoln: A Biography
   Rating:
   `A. Lincoln’ by Ronald C. White Jr.

   In this extremely well researched and superbly readable biography, Ronald White brings our 16th US President to life with clarity rarely seen among contemporary biographers. Beginning with a breakdown of the subjects family tree – a family tree, I may add, with branches that remained a mystery to Lincoln during his lifetime – through his congressional, senatorial and finally a remarkable presidential campaign. `Father Abraham’ comes to life with vivid imagery of his time spent logically analyzing matters, which in retrospect, were monumental in our nations history. Lincoln’s compassion, integrity and honesty shine through clearly in his relationships with cabinet members, old friends such as Joshua Speed and luminaries like Frederick Douglass. Mr. White does a splendid job demonstrating the near dazzling likeability this president possessed; rarely, if ever, did a political friend or foe find Lincoln anything but gracious, kind and magnanimous in most trying of times.

   The second half of this book deals with Lincoln’s presidency and devotes significant time to his prosecution of the Civil War. Family life takes somewhat of a backseat in the latter 250 or so pages as this time is spent with Lincoln formulating policy and self-educating on military strategy. However, family tragedies are examined and the effect these events had on the Lincoln family are discussed and analyzed.

   `A. Lincoln’ is an absolutely spellbinding read that I found near impossible to put down. It is as entertaining as it is educational, as comprehensive as it is compelling. Definitely pick it up and enjoy each and every page. Wonderful!
   

3. Sacramento Book Review
   

   Review by Sacramento Book Review for A. Lincoln: A Biography
   Rating:
   Lincoln the President continues to fascinate people, and 2009 being the bicentennial of his birth, will just increase the number of books and TV shows about him, his life and his presidency. The trick will be picking and choosing which book to read, and which to skip. For avid readers of Lincolnia, it will be finding books with new information, insights and conclusions. “A. Lincoln: A Biography” should be on the short-list for anyone interested in spending some quality time, (and, at 800 pages, a commitment of a long weekend), reading the latest, and probably best new biography in the last decade or so. White has used the recently completed Lincoln Legal Papers, along with newly discovered letters and photographs, to give a comprehensive overview of a country lawyer who made connections throughout his career that eventually made him a pivotal player in the newly reformed Republican Party (and almost made him the Vice-Presidential in 1856.)

   Lincoln often wrote down ideas and thoughts on scraps of paper and filed them in his top hat, or in the bottom drawer of his desk. The surviving notes work almost as a journal (an argument that White makes) and give another view into Lincoln’s thoughts, apart from the public speeches and private letters. White also delves into Lincoln’s family, particularly Lincoln’s complex relationship with his father, and his step-mother Sarah Bush Lincoln, who encouraged him to continue his education however he could. The book is broken up into the years leading up to the Presidency, and Lincoln’s time in office. There are a number of pictures, maps and editorial cartoon reprinted among the pages, and not in a series of plates, that adds to the layout and narrative. White’s writing style is approachable and easy to read, particularly helpful when the book itself is as long as this one. While there will be other Lincoln biographies released this year, “A. Lincoln” is likely to be a standard for the next several years.

4. Christian Schlect
   

   Review by Christian Schlect for A. Lincoln: A Biography
   Rating:
   Professor White, a notable expert on Mr. Lincoln, has produced a solid, well-written biography.

   The book is divided about equally between the years from birth leading up to the presidency and the years in actual office. Professor White rightly, and quite intelligently, devotes a fair deal of time to explaining the writing and political skills that led this man to greatness. The author is also good at explaining the religious influences, especially those of Rev. Gurley, that informed President Lincoln’s thinking on the possible purposes of the horrific war.

   While Professor White keeps family matters largely in the background (where they belong), I do think his view of Mary Lincoln is extremely kind. In my view she was the Hell Cat described by John Hay.

   All in all, a good purchase for any person seeking the life story of the finest man born 200 years ago (or since).
   

5. Robert Moore
   

   Review by Robert Moore for A. Lincoln: A Biography
   Rating:
   I’ve read somewhere around twenty to thirty books on Lincoln (along with FDR one of my two favorite American presidents) and this easily ranks among the very best that I have read. This is the one biography that I have read that competes with David Herbert Donald’s volume as the best single-volume biography of Lincoln. It joins the short list of my favorite Lincoln books, including Doris Kearns Goodwin’s A TEAM OF RIVALS, Allen C. Guelzo’s ABRAHAM LINCOLN: REDEEMER PRESIDENT, Herndon’s LINCOLN, William Lee Miller’s LINCOLN’S VIRTUES, Mark Noll’s THE CIVIL WAR AS A THEOLOGICAL CRISIS, the sections in Shelby Foote’s THE CIVIL WAR on Lincoln, Gore Vidal’s LINCOLN (actually an amazingly accurate depiction of Lincoln as president — David Herbert Donald worked closely with Vidal to assure the novel’s historical veracity), David Herbert Donald’s LINCOLN, James McPherson’s TRIED BY WAR, the Library of America two-volume collection of Lincoln’s writings (I’d love the new three-volume edition, but for now I’m stuck with the older one), and Harold Holzer’s IN HIS OWN HAND. All of these books provide new insights into Lincoln, but White’s biography might actually provide the finest overview of Lincoln’s life, even surpassing Oates, Donald, and Benjamin Thomas as the best single-volume biography.

   The biography not only does an outstanding job of recounting all of the major events of Lincoln’s life but does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of analyzing the logic of his speeches, letters, and public documents. This is no minor achievement. Lincoln is far and away the most analyzed figure in American history, in fact the most widely written about figure of the past two hundred years of any country (with the possible exception of Karl Marx). White also does a splendid job of showing how Lincoln remolded the United States, establishing the Declaration of Independence as the founding document. Many others have pointed this out (like Garry Wills in his book on the Gettysburg Address), but White does an outstanding job of placing it in the total context of Lincoln’s life. He is also outstanding at showing the growth of Lincoln’s thinking about the various issues, especially on the religious dimensions of the solution to the slavery.

   I have talked to a couple of people who had troubles with this biography. I personally do not feel the force of their complaints, but they are worth mentioning. White’s Lincoln is not a person with dark corners or moral ambiguities. White ignores (quite appropriately) the absurd accusations that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship, he does not even address the belief of some that Lincoln suffered from manic depression (my belief is that Lincoln’s periods of depression were not indicative of bipolar, simply because the periods of depression of which we are aware were in response to truly traumatic events; depression was appropriate to the death of his child, the death of friends, the progress of the war, and other triggering events), or other aspects of his life. Neither is he especially critical of Lincoln’s views on race, situating them in the beliefs of others at the time.

   I enjoyed this book so much that it may be the single book that I would recommend to people who want to read a first book on Lincoln. In fact, if someone asked me for a recommend for a book on Lincoln, I would recommend this along with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s TEAM OF RIVALS and Gore Vidal’s novel LINCOLN (people underestimate it because it is fiction, but Vidal brought Lincoln’s presidency to life more vividly than any other writer). This year was, of course, the bicentenary of the birth of Lincoln, which resulted in a deluge of books on Honest Abe, but for my money this was the best book of a very large bunch.