Abraham Lincoln

Over a half century after this book appeared, it is still the standard by which all one-volume Lincoln biographies are measured, and a reminder of how much we lost by the author's premature death when he was just hitting his stride as a Lincoln scholar and writer.

Very readable one volume life of Lincoln. Pulled things together in a way Sandburg's six volume masterpeice could not. A case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. And made utterly clear exactly what Lincoln was fighting for: that democracy as evidenced by the people's vote at the ballot box might survive as an example to the world. If all the states had voted in elections to let the succeeding states go, then OK. But there was no such election. It was always the Union, never slavery, that was his purpose, although he understood slavery to be at the heart of the matter.

I have been studying Abraham Lincoln for nearly 40 years. Many Lincoln scholars consider ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY by Benjamin P. Thomas to be one of the three best one-volume biographies of Lincoln written to date. The other two books are LINCOLN by David Herbert Donald and WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE by Stephen B. Oates.

Most Americans know the major details of the life of our sixteenth president: his pioneer family and humble upbringing; his self - education, his rise through native wit and intelligence from lawyer to state legislator to presidential candidate; his necessarily rapid growth as a statesman to become the virtual conscience of his nation during the bloodiest rift in it's history and spirit; his vilification in the South; his assassination; and his glorification in the Northern states. What many of us may not know are the particular incidents, decisions, and qualities which created the most extraordinary figure in out political history. In this one - volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin P. Thomas presents all the significant events and achievements in the life of one of the greatest presidents, and greatest men, in American history. These achievements, Thomas maintains, are a matter of record. There is none of the easy myth - making and hero worship that often mar both longer and shorter biographical treatments. In Abraham Lincoln readers will find little of the lyrical and romanticized Lincoln, nor will they encounter the historically possible but imagined situations which sometimes adorn Carl Sandburg's narrative. What they will find is a full account of the rise to power of a skillful politician and complicated man, who took on an enourmous amount of personal and public responsibility during the greatest crisis in our nation's history. Clearly an admirer of our sixteenth president, Thomas allows the story of Lincoln's successes and failures, and his priviate tragedies, to take its natural course to a regrettable and unnatural end. He permits both the character of the man and the weighty, worrisome decisions of the president to speak eloquently for themeselves. In summing up the Lincoln legacy, Thomas achieves an eloquence of his own: Lincoln saw his countrymen as inheritors of a trust. To them it had been given to make democracy succeed, to cleanse it of the hypocrisies that deprive it of its just example in the world. For in democracy, made genuine, he saw our last, best hope of frustrating any tyrant who seeks to regiment or debase or mislead any people, anywhere and of achieving peace on earth and good will among men and woman through the universal liberty of mankind.

AS IN ANY 101 INTRODUCTORY COURSE, HIGHLY RELEVENT OTHER INFORMATION IS MISSING. YET, THIS IS AN EXCELLENT ONE-VOLUME BOOK ABOUT LINCOLN. OTHER BOOKS THAT WOULD FLESH IT OUT DEAL WITH STEPHEN A DOUGLAS, CAPTAIN SAM GRANT (THE FIRST IN A TRILOGY, ALL OF WHICH ARE RELEVENT), (2)GRANT MOVES SOUTH, AND (3)GRANT TAKES COMMAND. IN ADDITION READ OTHER WORKS ABOUT LINCLON WRITTEN BY LUDWIG AND SANDBURG, ALSO THE LINCOLN READER, AND LETTERS AND SPEECHES BY LINCLON, AND THE READER WILL HAVE JUST BEGUN TO APPRECIATE THE GREATNESS OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO BECAME LINCOLN THE MAN, AND A GREAT PRESIDENT. MY 5-STAR RATING IS BASED ON THE 101 HYPOTHESIS IN THE HOPE IT WILL LEAD READERS TO INVESTIGATE FURTHER THE LIFE OF THIS NATION'S SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT THE BETTER TO APPRECIATE WHY LINCOLN IS SO RESPECTED AND HONORED, AS INDEED HE SHOULD BE.