How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them

This is a completely awesome book, which I could not put down. Wolff delves into the early lives of twelve famous Americans, starting with Ben Franklin and moving chronologically forward to Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, and all the way to Elvis Presley. We consider what they learned, what was going on around them, and how it shaped them into the adults they would become. This book weaves the lives of these twelve into one beautiful, unconventional quilt of American history - specifically, the history of how young Americans get educated. It is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, and I have read a LOT of books.

This is an important book, not because of insights about what is educationally helpful and what is not, as it proposes to do. The two educational points I thought it made were that the U.S. educational system has gotten better and better at offering opportunty to all, and the importance of intrinsic motivation. The educational system doesn't seem to get a lot of credit for the fact that it leads the world in providing an opportunity for education to almost all of its citizens. When you think of its exclusiveness in its early days, and which remains today in many countries, that is a worthy accomplishment. Second, and more importantly, the 12 famous individuals profiled in the book were very diverse, yet all had in common strong motivation. That may be the biggest weakness in schools today. Even though self-reliance is a widely popular mantra, most criticism of education seems more focused on the schools than on the students. Poor effort is surely a major cause of poor performance. Students shouldn't be so passive. The 12 individuals in the book did not achieve success by waiting for someone to motivate them. Most of them had many struggles to overcome. The book could stand alone as good history, regardless of its relevance to education. It even shed new light on commonly known facts by the way it told them. I knew the story of JFK and the wealth of his family, but the book really made clear how different is the life of the rich from most of the rest of us. It has implications for choosing leaders. Are they too isolated from the problems most of us cope with? Also, the story of Elvis made clear the "vicious cycle" of the economic life in the South for many working class people. This book is interesting to read and makes history come alive. A good companion to this book is one called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

For anyone who likes Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, you'll find that Daniel Wolff's book is an ideal companion. Whatever we thought we might have known about Lincoln, Franklin and others, Mr. Wolff gives us a unique perspective on what really shaped these thinkers' lives. Think of these chapters as accidental biographies. I also appreciated his including some women among his twelve great Americans. If I were teaching history, especially at the college level, this would be among my recommended reading. I'm not teaching--but I highly recommend it anyway.

In his 1995 book, You Send Me: The Life And Times Of Sam Cooke, stunning as it was for a first work, author Daniel Wolff displayed a rare gift for examining the environment, the black Pentecostal church and Chicago's South Side gospel music atmosphere, that spawned the explosive talent and cultural icon that he became in his all-too-brief life and career. Wolff's penchant and interest in the factors that allow someone to become a transcendant historical figure presaged his latest work, How Lincoln Learned To Read. In thought provoking, show-don't-tell style, Wolff recounts the formative years of twelve prominent Americans. Presented chronologically, he begins with eight-year-old Ben Franklin and his passage from distracted, rebellious youngster to apprentice printer. We see how he positions himself to spend his life as writer/publisher/inventor/political thinker, America's greatest intellectual jack-of-all-trades. Wolff ends with the youthful journey of Elvis Presley from dirt poor toddler in a family of tenant farmers and unskilled laborers to a teenager taking advantage of the mélange of musical streams found only in post-war Memphis. The reader meets ten others introduced by their childhood names. (Wait till you see who Nabby, Belle, Thocmetony and Willie turn out to be.) Brief biographical chapters describe the mix of environment, personal circumstance, available formal education, instinct and inner drive that combine to solidify purpose and character. Transformative incidents and situations (Andy Jackson's Revolutionary War battle experience, Helen Keller's w-a-t-e-r moment, and young Rachel Carson's solitary nature sojourns in Western Pennsylvania) are vivid and wonderfully drawn. Along the way, the reader is introduced to the learning tools that would periodically dominate the educational landscape: the New England Primer, Noah Webster's grammar book, the McGuffey Eclectic Reader, and St. Nicholas literary magazine. Readable, entertaining, with original research that could fill ten books, Daniel Wolff offers a portrait of how these Americans educated themselves, how they overcame and bypassed economic, social and cultural obstacles and how from an early age they followed a path that only they could see. It is an important book that historians, politicians, educators and parents everywhere should read.

How Lincoln Learned to Read is among the most important books to have been published in the last few years. While it can be read and enjoyed--as the reviews have pointed out--as a compilation of delightful, insightful, and instructive stories about these twelve Americans' educations, the book in fact provides a breathtakingly rich and original cultural history of America itself. With these twelve voices--more really--Wolff creates a true and great American song, one that will enrich anyone who listens closely enough. How Lincoln Learned to Read--with its brilliant, turn-on-a-dime prose, its subtlety, its laugh-out-loud wit, its wonderful range and precision, and its great, great heart--ought to be required reading. (And it will be for my students in the future!) It's a rare and astonishing achievement. -- David Daniel, long-time poetry editor of Ploughshares.