Matthew Pinsker, Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln. W.W. Norton, 2026; 564 pp., notes, index, illustrations. $39.99. Many of the thousands of books about Abraham Lincoln are specialized to some degree, rather than full biographies. Topics may be very narrow or quite broad, but still are focused on some specific aspect of Lincoln’s […]
Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein
Springfield historian Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein is a retired manuscripts librarian and an occasional book reviewer for Illinois Times.
Posted inBooks
Lincoln as historian? A different perspective.
Central Illinois is Abraham Lincoln country. Springfield has his law office, the home he owned as an adult, his tomb and the Old State Capitol, where he legislated and spoke. Surrounding regions focus on courthouses where Lincoln prosecuted or defended numerous cases, as well as the reconstructed village of New Salem, where Lincoln lived as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
WWII Illiopolis ordnance plants
Thelma L. Ball, compiler, Illinois Munitions: A News Journal of the Oak & Sangamon Ordnance Plants, 1942-1950, Illiopolis, Illinois. Self-published, 2025. 350 pp., illustrations, newspaper list, index. Illiopolis today considers itself a village, with a population of 846 recorded in the 2020 census. It was even smaller in 1942 – about 700 people – when […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Who loved/loves Lincoln?
When I finished reading the preface to Stacy Lynn’s Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of the Women Who Shaped Lincoln’s Life and Legacy, I was in tears. She had precisely nailed the types of demeaning and painful incidents experienced by most women historians and scholars in male-dominated fields. It was not at all what I […]
Posted inOpinion
The postal service is out of service
It is hard to watch someone or something that you love die. The U.S. Postal Service has been a lifelong friend. The thrill of getting one’s first card. The joys of exchanging letters and cards with friends and loved ones across the country at low cost. (I remember when first class postage was 3 or […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The joys of reading and shopping
When my husband and I moved from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Springfield in 2001, we were relieved to see that, although it is a smaller city, Springfield had a number of bookstores. There was Barnes & Noble, of course, but also B. Dalton, Waldenbooks and Chapter One, a small independent shop in Fairhills Mall. In addition, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Buried treasures from the ’60s
If you had 300 cubic foot boxes of documents, diaries and other materials, mostly from the 1960s, in your basement and garage, what would you do? When Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, assessed their situation in 2012, they did not panic or call a junk hauler. Instead, they decided to examine […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lincoln’s faith in context
Ever since Abraham Lincoln ran for Congress in 1846 and his opponent, the fiery Methodist minister Peter Cartwright, accused him of being an “infidel,” at least a certain segment of the population has been interested in the facts about Lincoln’s religious faith. As it turns out, those facts are not necessarily easy to determine. Biographers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Novel makes Springfield history come alive
Over the years there have been several historical novels of varying quality starring members of the Lincoln family. From the title, Nancy Horan’s new novel, The House of Lincoln, could easily be mistaken for more of this Lincolncentric fiction. While the Lincolns do play a prominent part in the story, the focus is much broader. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Illinois becomes a state
James A. Edstrom, Avenues of Transformation: Illinois’ Path from Territory to State. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2022. 250 pages, $26.50 It is always interesting to see why a person decided to write a book. The impetus for Avenues of Transformation came in 1987 when a patron asked librarian James A. Edstrom a question about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dealing with dangerous ideas
The later 1960s are widely recognized as a period of intense upheaval in the United States. However, the unrest developed over time, as the two controversies discussed in Matthew C. Ehrlich’s Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK show (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021, $24.95). The two […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Upheaval in Alton
The 1830s were a volatile decade in the United States. Andrew Jackson, president until 1837, encouraged more rights for working class white males at the expense of the elite. Many Easterners moved to the Midwest. Various innovations led to a booming economy, which then busted in the Panic of 1837. Antislavery sentiment began to grow […]
