Lincoln Remainders

Our Discount Books buyers have been scouting for Lincoln books, and the first few are in. Remainders, for any who might not know the bookseller lingo, are titles the publishers are discontinuing so the remaining stock is sold off at a higher discount, meaning lower prices for readers.

The prices are great, but the quantities are limited, so if you want any of these, you'd best hurry in before they are gone. (Once they're gone, they're gone for good.)

Just a few titles:

Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the first major Lincoln biographies, published not long after Lincoln's death, by the founder of Scribner's Magazine. $7.98 in paperback.

Lincoln in The Times: The Life of Abraham Lincoln as Originally Reported in The New York Times, edited by David Herbert Donald and Harold Holzer -- two names that should be familiar to Lincoln readers (and to readers of this blog.) $8.98 in hardcover.

Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, by Richard Striner. $9.98 in hardcover.

Black Men Built the Capital: Discovering African-American History in and Around Washington, D.C., by Jesse Holland -- referenced in a number of recent articles about the incoming administration and the changing face of the Nation's capital. Only $5.98 in paperback.

Many more to come, so keep an eye on this blog and the Bargain Books tables in the main lobby!

The New Standard of David Herbert Donald

What makes a biography the “standard life?” Most obviously, if the biography eventually eclipses the subject in fame – think of Boswell’s Johnson – then all subsequent biographies, no matter the additional information they contain, or the quality of the writing – and again Samuel Johnson comes first to mind – will always be something less than the standard. Generally though, if the fame of the subject is sustained across generations, then each generation will produce a new standard life to replace those that preceded it. And here no better example exists than the biographers of Abraham Lincoln.

From Nicolay & Hay in 1890, to Ida Tarbell in 1900, to Beveredge, to Sandburg, to James G. Randall, our 16th President has never lacked a standard life in print for each passing generation.

So what makes David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln the standard life for our times? First, Donald had access to the Lincoln Papers, which previous biographers did not. As a result of the materials available to him, but perhaps more importantly, because of the man who emerged from those sources, Donald’s portrait is of a very different, and much more accessibly modern man than the one we know from the earlier portraits.

I’ll let Donald (from his preface,) speak for himself:

“In focusing closely on Lincoln himself – on what he knew, when he knew it, and why he made his decisions – I have, I think, produced a portrait rather different from that of other biographers. It is perhaps a bit more grainy than most, with more attention to his unquenchable ambition, to his brain-numbing labor in his law practice, to his tempestuous married life, and to his defeats. It suggests how often chance, or accident, played a determining role in shaping his life. And it emphasizes his enormous capacity for growth, which enabled one of the least experienced and most poorly prepared men ever elected to high office to become the greatest American President.”

David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln is still our Lincoln, but in the hands of this extraordinary historian and biographer, Abraham Lincoln is once again his own man as well; flawed, sad, brilliant and profoundly human.

Looking at Looking for Lincoln

In the ongoing Frenzy of Lincoln Bicentennial publishing, by far the biggest and most visually satisfying offering this year to date would have to be Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon.  Requiring the services of what seems to be nearly the whole Kunhardt family, who, according to their fascinating preface, have been in the business of Lincoln collecting and writing for generations, this volume brings together a truly cornucopian selection of photos, contemporary quotations, and memorabilia.  

Unlike their earlier (and sadly out of print,) Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, this weighty volume from the Kunhardts is concerned less with his life than with witness and what one might call the afterlife of Lincoln.  As a result, there is much new here for even the devoted reader of Lincoln biography and post-Civil War history; Lincoln's children, the later lives of his friends and coworkers, his place in our history and hearts.

Boasting an introduction by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the author of the (again) bestselling A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and a forward by David Herbert Donald, the author of the best contemporary, one volume biography, titled simply Lincoln, this new book is a treasure trove of excellent scholarship, sound writing, and fascinating side-lights to the Lincoln story. 

At $50.00, this is not an inexpensive book, but it is a beautiful addition to any Lincoln library.