Abraham Lincoln & Lincolniana Message Board

Welcome! Thanks for coming to visit (or join!) us! I'll kick off the discussion...

Since the time many years ago my grandfather gave me his six volume set of Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln, I have been fascinated - even obsessed - with the study of Abraham Lincoln and his era.

And - nearly 1,000 Lincoln books, one college history major, three published articles written, more than two decades of membership in the Abraham Lincoln Association, and many "field trips" - later, I still feel I have a lot more to learn.

I look forward to exploring how other people's understanding and perceptions of Lincoln have developed through their libraries too!

Note - nearly all of my Lincoln books are yet to be inventoried, so check back if you're looking for something

I'm currently reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's a good read. She gives great background on all of Lincoln's rivals as well as Lincoln. I found this book in an airport bookstore and started reading it while waiting for the plane. I'm only about halfway through, since I read lots of books at once, but I do like it so far. :)

Now, Carl Sandburg has always been an author I've enjoyed. I'll have to check out that collection. I knew of his poetry - but had never really looking into what else he had written. :)

One of the most trenchant books on Lincoln as a lawyer and President I've ever read is also one of the slimmest: Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James M. McPherson. (Tick off your friends from the South! Assert that the Civil War was the suppression of a rather large riot.) For good legal reasons Lincoln never once referred to "the Confederacy," AFAIK.

The Inner Civil War by George M. Fredrickson is classic intellectual history. Some Memories of a Long Life by Malvina Shanklin Harlan is a fine social and legal history (her husband was Justice John Marshall Harlan).

Lincoln casts a long shadow. I picked up The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership by Ann Ruth Willner at a yard sale. It asserts that Kennedy was assimilated to the Lincoln legend in a "postmortem retroactive attribution of charisma." Ritual myth and all that.

I think we can safely assume that Abraham Lincoln turns up in some surprising indexes!

I tag frontispiece quotations -136 and counting- and much to my suprise Abraham Lincoln has yet to show up!

>>I tag frontispiece quotations

Kencf, what an interesting use for tags! Never thought of doing that.

I can't seem to recall many in recent years either!

AFAIK I'm the first person to have done any such thing anywhere. (One of the minor glories of LibraryThing.) And I think you're right -by and large they have gone out of fashion.