I am grateful to the Washington Monthly — not for the first time — for alerting me to the release of a new biography of Lincoln that focuses on his Springfield years.
Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, reviewed Sidney BLumenthal’s A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849, the first of a three-volume history of Lincoln “as a political genius—from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction.”
We should always be grateful for a new book on this period, if only because it gives us something new dispute. I can’t recommend it beyond that for the moment, as I haven’t read it, but Guelzo’s enthusiasm (he describes it “a great book, on a theme that too many people disdain to regard as great”) makes it likely I will.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2016.
