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Gran Leon Books - Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
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List Price: $27.95
Our Price: $18.45
Your Save: $ 9.50 ( 34% )
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Manufacturer: Harper
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780060773342
ISBN: 0060773340
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2008-11-01
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: 2008-10-28
Studio: Harper
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Editorial Reviews:
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For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America's sixteenth president through his use of language as a vehicle both to express complex ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment. Like the other great canonical writers of American literature—a status he is gradually attaining—Lincoln had a literary career that is inseparable from his life story. An admirer and avid reader of Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, and the Old Testament, Lincoln was the most literary of our presidents. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature. Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln's mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln's life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy. Illuminating and engrossing, Lincoln brilliantly chronicles Abraham Lincoln's genius with language.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating speculations about the influences on Lincoln
Comment: Professor Kaplan does an excellent job of reconstructing the likely influences upon Lincoln as a developing writer and thinker.
Lincoln was a very guarded and private man, and so much of the evidence mined by Kaplan is necessarily circumstantial. In particular, he draws many inferences about Lincoln's private beliefs from authors he likely carefully read as a youth, such as Burns, Byron and Shakespeare. Professor Kaplan's expertise in literature and history makes him well suited to this task. And many of the inferences he draws do seem very plausible.
Still, I give the book only 4 starts rather than 5, because it seems that Professor Kaplan gets carried away at times with his speculations about Lincoln's thought life, projecting greater certainty than the circumstantial evidence would warrant, and downplaying contrary evidence.
For example, Professor Kaplan seems anxious to establish that Lincoln did not believe in the afterlife. He returns to that point repeatedly throughout the book. Yet he quotes from a speech that Lincoln gave in honor of Washington, which stated his belief that the deceased Washington was only sleeping, and that "the last trump shall awaken our Washington." (Page 78) Kaplan does not comment on the significance of these words -- he quotes the speech for another purpose. Yet Lincoln was very careful with the language of his public statements, seeking honesty and precision. And he chose his words on religion very carefully. Why then would he have given a speech stating his belief that Washington's soul was only sleeping, and that he would be resurrected at the end of time?
(I suspect that Lincoln was uncertain about the immortality of the soul in his early years. But we know from Lincoln's public statements that he believed in both God and prayer, and that his belief in a personal God became stronger in his White House years. Lincoln also had a high view of humanity. Thus, it seems likely that he came to believe that humanity, with its ability to grasp the infinite, was made for immortality.)
Overall, though, Kaplan's book provides many fascinating insights into the probable development of Lincoln as a thinker and a writer. It is very enjoyable to read. So, with the caveat noted above, I recommend the book to the many fans of our greatest president!
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Summary: Lincoln As A Writer
Comment: Jonathan Yardley, critic for the WASHINGTON POST, called this latest book about our greatest president Abraham Lincoln "the book of the year." Perhaps I was expecting too much from such a superlative recommendation, but I ultimately found the book disappointing. Mr. Kaplan mixes biography and literary criticism, a difficult task at best. I would have preferred to see less biography and analysis and more of Lincoln's actual writing so I could make my own conclusions from reading the actual prose. And while the author writes at length about some of the sixteenth president's earlier less-known speeches, he says precious little about what many scholars consider Lincoln's crowning achievements in literature, his Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address-- a most obvious flaw.
Finally Kaplan ends his narrative abruptly with the following: "Four days later his [Lincoln's] ability to exercise his gift for language and his mastery of words on this and all other subjects ended."
Mr. Kaplan, however, does provide the reader with a lot of information about both Lincoln's reading as well as his writing. For example, he was well-versed in the Bible, Shakespeare, Byron and Burns and committed large portions of these writings to memory. He almost never spoke extemporaneously and apparently could have been a fine poet, had he chosen to do so. Kaplan rearranges Lincoln's prose (p. 303) into a free verse poem that he finds worthy of Walt Whitman. Lincoln, for example, also wrote beautifully about Niagra Falls.
Mr. Kaplan compares Lincoln as writer with other presidents: "Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached. Though some presidents after him wrote well, particularly Grant, Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt,the articulation of a modern president's vision and policies has fallen to speechwriters and speech-writing committees, with the president serving, at best, as editor in chief." Kaplan indicates that Jimmy Carter may have written his own speeches but describes him as "a writer of competence but not literary talent." Bill Clinton is "the best-educated post-World War II president, with a gift for spontaneous oratory rather than disciplined writing."
Lincoln of course continues to fascinate both writers and readers alike-- and presidents-elect-- so perhaps many other readers will like this book more than I did. The fault may be my own. I probably should have read the writings of Lincoln rather than this analysis of them.
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Summary: Lincoln's Writing Analyzed
Comment: BOOK REVIEW: Abe Lincoln: Writer Extraordinaire
By David M. Kinchen
Abraham Lincoln was a rising star in the new Republican Party when he was invited in August 1859 to speak at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society fair in Milwaukee at the end of September. He accepted the offer despite a busy court schedule, relates Fred Kaplan in "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer" (HarperCollins, 416 pages, $27.95).
Kaplan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College in New York City, devotes more space in his book to this speech than he does to more famous literary efforts by Lincoln, including the Gettysburg Address. Using perhaps the best analytical mind of any of our presidents, Lincoln presented a powerful but subtle argument for freedom at a time when the nation was about to be torn asunder over slavery. To put the speech into its historical context, John Brown's raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), was only a few weeks in the future (Oct. 16, 1859).
Arranging the opening elements of the Milwaukee speech like a poem, Kaplan creates verse that is reminiscent of Walt Whitman, whose "Leaves of Grass" was first published in 1855 and revised several times thereafter.
Here are the opening lines from Kaplan's typographical realignment of the opening of Lincoln's September 1859 Milwaukee speech:
Every blade of grass is a study;
And to produce two,
Where there was but one,
Is both a profit and a pleasure.
And not grass alone;
But soils, seeds, and seasons
Hedges, ditches, and fences,
Draining, droughts, and irrigation --
Plowing, hoeing, and harrowing --
Reaping, mowing, and threshing --
Saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops,
And what will prevent or cure them --
Implements, utensils, and machines,
Their relative merits,
And [how] to improve them --
Hogs, horses, and cattle --
Sheep, goats, and poultry --
Trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers --
The thousand things
Of which these are specimens --
Each a world of study within itself.
* * *
Kaplan says the Milwaukee speech is Lincoln's best poem and the reference to specimens anticipates Whitman's 1882 volume "Specimen Days."
The book explores new ground in the vast field of Lincoln biographies -- especially relevant with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth next Feb. 12 -- and the election of another Illinois lawyer, Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States.
The subtext is that the tall, gangly railsplitter, originally from Hardin County, Kentucky and almost totally self-educated, has a present-day counterpart in the Ivy League educated Obama, whose education more closely mirrors that of Robert Todd Lincoln, the 16th president's oldest son.
Kaplan stresses throughout this exhaustively researched and very readable book -- you don't have to be an English major like me to appreciate it -- that words mattered to Lincoln. He knew the difference between lightning and a lightning bug -- as Mark Twain so aptly phrased it -- and used language as a vehicle to express complicated ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment.
This was true whether Lincoln was composing speeches like the Milwaukee one that examined capital and labor; legal arguments (Lincoln was a prominent railroad attorney with a busy practice first in Springfield, the state capital and later in Chicago, the Prairie State's booming metropolis); or even love letters.
So, you say, aren't all presidents gifted with the ability to make words work for them. Actually not, says Kaplan. Ronald Reagan may have been the Great Communicator, but the Illinois native and former California governor was blessed with talented speech writers. The same goes for Franklin D. Roosevelt and most other presidents. You have to go back to John Quincy Adams, the 6th President (1825-1829) to find someone as gifted with the pen as Lincoln, Kaplan writes.
Kaplan, the author of biographies of Twain, Gore Vidal, Dickens and others, says that the literary output of Lincoln, collected in a standard eight-volume edition published in 1953 (see the wonderful annotated bibliography for details on this and other relevant works) is inseparable from his life story.
Lincoln from the start was a bookworm or, to use the phrase Dorothy Parker employed, a "constant reader." Although not religious in the traditional sense -- a topic Kaplan also explores -- Lincoln was intimately familiar with the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. He loved the poetry of Robert Burns and in the last year of his life, in January 1865, was invited to give a tribute to Burns at the Washington, D.C. dinner held on January 25, Burns' birthday.
Otherwise engaged -- the war was still raging -- Lincoln sent a toast to the Burns Club of Washington: "I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart, and transcendent genius. Thinking of what he has said, I can not say anything which seems worth saying."
By modestly saying that he couldn't add to the tributes to Burns, Lincoln was actually giving the Scottish poet his highest praise. Now that's great writing!
He devoured Byron, Shakespeare and read constantly when he was on the legal circuit in central Illinois or during any spare moment. Fellow bookworms -- and I'm one -- can instantly identify with Lincoln.
Lincoln put his reading to good use, Kaplan writes. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature.
We can only hope that Barack Obama -- like Lincoln a transplant to Illinois -- can express his ideas and ideals in words he has crafted, as Lincoln did. Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and reached out to his audience as effectively as the man who had only a few months of formal education, but who was supremely skilled with the English language.
Words count, Kaplan reminds us, as if we need reminding in the wake of past presidencies -- of both political parties -- when words led the nation astray. "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer" highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.
Kaplan: "Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached," and he "was also the last president whose character and standards in the use of language avoided the distortions and other dishonest uses of language that have done so much to undermine the credibility of national leaders."
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Summary: Lincoln: THe Biography of a Writer
Comment: Kaplan has a distinct purpose of tracing the literary influences on Lincoln and the consequent development of Lincoln as a writer. He makes the case that Lincoln's faith in reason and the pursuasive use of the written word were the source of his political effectiveness and his greatest legacy.
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Summary: Missed the mark
Comment: I have become very skeptical of "historical" works that are written today as they are biased and authors tend to change history or ignore it. I have read several books that are from my grandfather's library (150+ books) on Lincoln and there is a greater influence of the Bible than discussed in this book. For example, "Just as he was without the opportunity of regular attendance up the day-school, so he was also without the opportunity of attendance upon Sunday-school and upon church and Bible class. And yet there was no book to which he devoted so much time, study, analysis and application of its great truths as he did to the Bible. As Herndon (his former law partner) has well said: "This book was nearly always at his elbow." - The Voice of Lincoln, New York Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920
This is a secular progressive trying to skew a historical president into liberal agenda. Sorry, he didn't think like you and Lincoln didn't "probably regarded John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" in secular terms as a parable about upward mobility that resonated with his own efforts "to find a path out of the limitations of his father's world" of manual labor." Hogwash!
The thing is he was an avid reader Bible. He had problem with organized religion and the Churches of the day. He was not Godless, secular progressive liberal. It is just not so. Here is a quote from Lincoln in an interview in 1860 with Newton Batman, superintendant of public instruction of Illinois.
"Here we have twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian -- God knows I would be one -- but I have carefully read the Bible, and do not so understand this book"; (and he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament). "These men well know, " he continued, "that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and laws weill permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all."
Here Mr. Lincoln paused -- paused for long minutes, his features surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down the room in the effort to retain or regain his self-possession. Stopping at last, he said, with a trembling voice and his cheeks wet with tears: " I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me -- and I think He has -- I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright."
Sounds to me he had a strong understanding of the Bible and a personal relationship with this God.
Subrosa7
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