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Reviews
Reviews
This book supplants [Carl] Sandburg and supersedes all other biographies. Future Lincoln books cannot be written without it, and from no other book can a general reader learn so much about Abraham Lincoln. It is the essential title for the bicentennial.
A complete view of Lincoln's life... thorough.
A monumental boxed effort that weighs in at 10 pounds... The result is a picture of Lincoln from all sides, in a style that is relentless but not daunting.
A magisterial enterprise.
If you aspire to Ultimate Lincoln Knowledge this is a must-read.
These monumental volumes deserve a wide readership.
Burlingame is a towering figure in Lincoln scholarship, and students of the 16th president have been waiting for this book for years. For all his learning—Burlingame may know more about Lincoln and his era than anyone in the world—his take on his subject is fresh, and he doesn't gloss over Lincoln's less appealing attributes. Abraham Lincoln comes as close to being the definitive biography as anything the world has seen in decades.
An exhaustive and stylishly written biography.
A stunning feat of research.
The two-volume set is being heralded as the ultimate new biography of Lincoln, an essential work to be used by all future biographers of the 16th president.
The granddaddy of all the recent books [on Lincoln] is Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life... monumental in size, depth and scholarship, this is the new standard biography of our time and surpasses all other life portraits of our 16th president, and is the most important book of the bicentennial.
No review could do complete justice to the magnificent two-volume biography that has been so well-wrought by Michael Burlingame.
The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth has generated a plethora of Lincoln-related items, but none impresses more than this two-volume biography... Essential.
The author knows more about Lincoln than any other living person.
Most thorough account of the development of Lincoln as a man and politician against the backdrop of America's struggle to mature as an idea and a nation... Not a Lincoln for our times, but the Lincoln of his times, and future biographers would do well to take note(s).
This magisterial work tells a rich, thoroughly documented, birth-to-death story of America's greatest president. Its bulk is formidable, but it holds countless rewards for undaunted readers.
Burlingame very likely knows more about Lincoln than anyone who's ever lived, including Mary Todd, and his biography, 20 years in the writing, has a revelation on every page, dug out during the biographer's tireless research into musty libraries and forgotten attics that no one has ever thought to look in before. If there is anything knowable that you want to know about Lincoln, this is the place to find it.
A monumental and meticulous two-volume study of the 16th president... should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in Lincoln.
Lincoln scholars have waited anxiously for this book for decades. Its triumphant publication proves it was well worth the wait. Few scholars have written with greater insight about the psychology of Lincoln. No one in recent history has uncovered more fresh sources than Michael Burlingame. This profound and masterful portrait will be read and studied for years to come.
The remarkable breadth of Burlingame's research has resulted in a book unlike anything else written about Lincoln. It will be a major contribution to the field.
Burlingame has developed a familiarity with the details of Lincoln's life that is truly authoritative, even definitive, and he has genuinely earned his reputation for knowing more about Lincoln than just about anyone who has ever studied him.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
7
x 10
Pages
960
ISBN
9781421409733
Illustration Description
32 halftones
Table of Contents
Author's Note
1. "I Have Seen a Good Deal of the Back Side of This World" Childhood in Kentucky (1809–1816)
2. "I Used to Be a Slave" Boyhood and Adolescence in Indiana (1816–1830)
3. "Separated from His
Author's Note
1. "I Have Seen a Good Deal of the Back Side of This World" Childhood in Kentucky (1809–1816)
2. "I Used to Be a Slave" Boyhood and Adolescence in Indiana (1816–1830)
3. "Separated from His Father, He Studied English Grammar" New Salem (1831–1834)
4. "A Napoleon of Astuteness and Political Finesse" Frontier Legislator (1834–1837)
5. "We Must Fight the Devil with Fire" Slasher-Gaff Politico in Springfield (1837–1841)
6. "It Would Just Kill Me to Marry Mary Todd" Courtship and Marriage (1840–1842)
7. "I Have Got the Preacher by the Balls" Pursuing a Seat in Congress (1843–1847)
8. "A Strong but Judicious Enemy to Slavery" Congressman Lincoln (1847–1849)
9. "I Was Losing Interest in Politics and Went to the Practice of the Law with Greater Earnestness Than Ever Before" Midlife Crisis (1849–1854)
10. "Aroused as He Had Never Been Before" Reentering Politics (1854–1855)
11. "Unite with Us, and Help Us to Triumph" Building the Illinois Republican Party (1855–1857)
12. "A House Divided" Lincoln vs. Douglas (1857–1858)
13. A David Greater than the Democratic Goliath" The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
14. "That Presidential Grub Gnaws Deep" Pursuing the Republican Nomination (1859–1860)
15. "The Most Available Presidential Candidate for Unadulterated Republicans" The Chicago Convention (May 1860)
16. "I Have Been Elected Mainly on the Cry 'Honest Old Abe'" The Presidential Campaign (May–November 1860)
17. "I Will Suffer Death Before I Will Consent to Any Concession or Compromise": President-elect in Springfield (1860–1861)
18. "What If I Appoint Cameron, Whose Very Name Stinks in the Nostrils of the People for His Corruption?": Cabinet-Making in Springfield (1860–1861)
19. "The Man Does Not Live Who Is More Devoted to Peace Than I Am, But It May Be Necessary to Put the Foot Down Firmly" From Springfield to Washington, February 11-22, 1861
20. "I Am Now Going To Be Master" Inauguration, February 23-March 4, 1861
21. "A Man So Busy Letting Rooms in One End of His House, That He Can't Stop to Put Out the Fire that is Burning in the Other" Distributing Patronage, March-April 1861
22. "You Can Have No Conflict Without Being Yourselves the Aggressors" The Fort Sumter Crisis, March-April 1861
23. "I Intend to Give Blows" The Hundred Days, April-July 1861
24. "Sitzkrieg" The Phony War, August 1861-January 1862
25. "This Damned Old House" The Lincoln Family in the Executive Mansion
26. "I Expect to Maintain This Contest Until Successful, or Till I Die, or Am Conquered, or My Term Expires, or Congress or the Country Forsakes Me": From the Slough of Despond to the Gates of Richmond, January-July, 1862
27. "The Hour Comes for Dealing with Slavery" January-July 1862
28. "Would You Prosecute the War with Elder-Stalk Squirts, Charged with Rose Water?" The Soft War Turns Hard, July-September 1862
29. "The Great Event of the Nineteenth Century" September-December 1862
30. "Go Forward, and Give Us Victories" From the Mud March to Gettysburg, January-July 1863
31. "The Signs Look Better" Victory at the Polls and in the Field, July-November 1863
32. "I Hope to Stand Firm Enough to Not Go Backward, and YetNot Go Forward Fast Enough to Wreck the Country's Cause": Reconstruction and Renomination, November 1863-June 1864
33. "Hold on with a Bulldog Grip and Chew and Choke as Much as Possible" The Grand Offensive, May-August, 1864
34. "The Wisest Radical of All" Reelection, September-November, 1864
35. "Let the Thing Be Pressed" Victory at Last, November 1864-April 1865
36. "I Feel a Presentiment That I Shall Not Outlast theRebellion. When It Is Over, My Work Will Be Done" April 9-15, 1865
Notes
Featured Contributor
Michael Burlingame, Ph.D.
Michael Burlingame (MYSTIC, CT) is Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield. He is the author or editor of several books about Lincoln, including Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks; The Black Man’s President: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Equality; and An American Marriage: The...Resources
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