A 1919 painting of Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas during a debate at Charleston, on Sept. 18, 1858. Abraham Lincoln: An Illustrated Life and Legacy, by Thomas F. Schwartz and Thomas Cussans. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, Calif. 96 pp., $29.99. ’Tis the new year, and a good time for settling in with a good […]
Todd Volker
Todd Volker lives in Ottawa, Ill.
Posted inArts & Culture
The selling of the 16th president
If you had to make a Lincoln from scratch, what would you toss in? You got your Basic Honesty, the Law and Politics, the Great Emancipator Business, Fighter of the War, and so forth. You would likely add his Frontier Humor and his Humble Origins – the whole Horatio Alger stuff. Voila! Lincoln! Our Lincoln […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The biggest Lincoln birthday present of all
Proud parent Michael Burlingame has delivered to us a fine 8 lb., 1 oz. baby just in time for the Lincoln Bicentennial. Burlingame, professor emeritus at Connecticut College, has been expectant for approximately one decade. Christened Abraham Lincoln: A Life, this book reflects a ton of hard work at the scholarly salt mines. It is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The great debate
Untitled Document The Lincoln-Douglas Debates are like the Magna Carta or the Gadsden Purchase: You kind of know that they’re important and maybe even have a rough notion of what they’re about. So why read Allen C. Guelzo’s new Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America? The prairies were a-fired up in 1858. Stephen […]
Posted inMusic
Smorgasbord of sound
Untitled Document It’s 1927, the Jazz Age, with poet Carl Sandburg toting a funny little guitar and strumming carelessly to the old tunes: “Whisky Johnny” and “Where O Where Is Old Elijah?” The Galesburger-Chicagoan published his wildly popular American Songbag with 280 songs from sailors, cowboy, railroad hands, pioneers, prisoners, and preachers. Sandburg, motivated by The […]
Posted inNews
Melancholy genius
With Abraham Lincoln’s 197th birthday just around the corner, it’s worth taking a look at two noteworthy recent books about our 16th president. The authors of both will be in Springfield this weekend to take part in the Abraham Lincoln Association’s programs for the day. Doris Kearns Goodwin delves into the Lincoln field with Team […]
