Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon

For anyone who is interested in the history of Abraham Lincoln and how his life impacted our history this book is a wonderful resource. Outstanding photographic history and a well balanced view that considers the pros and cons of how many of his contemporaries viewed the legacy of Lincoln.

A good purchase for anyone interested in Mr. Lincoln, especially to matters related to the years following his death through to the completion of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922 and the passing in 1926 of the last direct survivor, Robert in 1926. Not a detailed biography, but a pictorial book that should inspire one to further reading. It is great as to the photographic record surrounding Mr. Lincoln, a fine introduction to his various early biographers, as well as instructive about how racial politics actually played out in the many decades after the Emancipation Proclamation. (For example, one would think that the uncritical high estimation some still have of President Woodrow Wilson would be blasted away.) After reading this book one would have to be a blockhead not to be in wonder, in light of the results of the 2008 presidential election, at the progress on racial issues that has been made in the United States.

I don't even know where to start.. I anticipated this release hoping it would have some great photos and archive info... it bypassed my expectations by leaps and bounds.. the photos bring to life an era of our history that many only know the outline of. The good , the bad and the ugly all team here with anything you ever wanted to know and things you didn't.. EVEN if you are not a history fan it is NOT a dry read. You can also go at your own pace.. flip to sections , etc.. its the visual of a coffee table book but one you WANT to read and pick up time and time again. From the cover photo (Lincolns beaver hat the day he was shot) to the history of anything Lincoln, it is a page turner. over and over again, everything draws you in. I felt like I could touch the dust on Lincolns hat, or see the expressions of the people and the mood of the nation at his death. It is not a bunch of antique potraits, (yes those are there too) but many candid shots as welll along with letters, stories, news and unedited first hand accounts. The reminder that these were real people in a very real time. If I could write these authors I would do it in a heartbeat.. I read a great deal and own probably over 1000 books that cover many genres. History is on of my favorite.. but this book... besides being visually stunning, is a must have for historians, and the curious alike.. get this, you will NOT be sorry.. it is nothing short of spectacular!

The bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln will be upon us next year, and there will be ceremonies, re-dedications of memorial buildings and statues, and plenty of books. It is hard to imagine that any of the books will surpass in beauty and significance _Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon_ (Knopf) by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. The reason there are so many Kunhardts as authors is that they are a family that for five generations has been involved in Lincoln scholarship and collecting Lincoln memorabilia; some of this Kunhardt clan has already brought us a well-regarded illustrated biography of Lincoln. Now they have turned their view to what happened after Lincoln's death; the book starts with the assassination at Ford's Theater, and covers the next sixty years, as the nation first came to grips with its loss, then tried to come to terms with what Lincoln had meant and had intended for his nation. This is a big book, lavish with photographs on every page, pictures of Lincoln (an appendix shows every photo known), the homes he came from, his family, his associates and enemies, the first attempts at biography, and the commemorations that were performed through the years. It is also a sobering book, as a theme that runs through it is how the nation gradually concentrated on the comfortable image of the Lincoln who had led a war to keep the Union together, rather than the Lincoln who had freed the slaves and made them citizens. Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, 16 April 1865. Telegraph reports of his death went out the next day, and clergy had to rearrange their Easter sermons to reflect the shock of a first presidential assassination. It was the start of a national sainthood for America's Savior. It is hard to imagine what Lincoln would have made of such displays and feelings. Even his wife Mary initially admitted, "Mr. Lincoln had ho faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words," but as the years passed, she encouraged the view of Lincoln as "a true Christian gentleman". One main character in this book is Frederick Douglass, who had not supported Lincoln initially, and never became a sycophantic supporter of the President, but who realized that through the Emancipation Proclamation and other unofficial acts, Lincoln had shown himself "emphatically the black man's president: the first to show any respect to their rights as men." He was a friend to Lincoln, and afterward to Mary, who presented him with Lincoln's antler-headed walking stick. The other main figure throughout this book is Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln. He had never won his father's approval, but he did what he could to promulgate the vision he had of his father, protesting the commercialization of such sites as Lincoln's Springfield home, and he loathed the fabled log cabin of Lincoln's birth as showing naught but "degradation and uncleanliness." Robert Todd Lincoln was on the platf