Books January 2009
Lincoln season
On Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-chief by James M. McPherson
James M. McPherson -->reviewed by Marc Arkin -->
For students of the Civil War, the lone figure of Abraham Lincoln fills the place occupied by the entire founding generation for historians of the early republic. There is simply no other person of comparable stature during the war years. This has certain drawbacks. One of them is a problem of oversupply. In living memory, readers have been treated to Lincoln the theologian (William J. Wolf, The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln), Lincoln the rhetor (Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg), Lincoln the master politician (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Lincoln the messianic figure (Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln:...
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