I guess you could say I've been on an Abraham Lincoln benge lately... as I have spent much of the last 5 weeks reading about him.
I started my oddesy through the life of Lincoln on August 13th by reading James Swanson's Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. For those of you who thought you knew something of the Lincoln assassination, I would definitely recomend this book... ever wondered whate ever became of the Lincoln's guests, Miss Harris & Major Rathburn? Or how about Boston Corbet the killer of John Wilkes Booth? I guarantee what you will discover of what happened to these people after the great events of their lives will truely make you want to stand up and slap your high school history teacher and scream at him/her "Why didn't you tell us this in history class?"
I devoured Mr. Swanson's book relatively quickly... I finished it on August 19th. I then continued on with my reading on Abraham Lincoln with Doris Kearns Goodwin's large tome, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which took me all of 3 whole weeks to read, and have, today, just finished. Ms. Goodwin has succeeded at creating something more than just a biography or a social/political historical text. She paints an intimate portrait of Abraham Lincoln through his relationships with his rivals for the 1860 presidential election who he later chose to assemble as his cabinet.
There are a couple of other books I have yet to read, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln and and Jean H. Baker's, Mary Todd Lincoln, which I will read hopefully before the end of the year, but first I need a break - from nonfiction - a break from the Civil War - so I'm going to switch gears and read Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found.
I started my oddesy through the life of Lincoln on August 13th by reading James Swanson's Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. For those of you who thought you knew something of the Lincoln assassination, I would definitely recomend this book... ever wondered whate ever became of the Lincoln's guests, Miss Harris & Major Rathburn? Or how about Boston Corbet the killer of John Wilkes Booth? I guarantee what you will discover of what happened to these people after the great events of their lives will truely make you want to stand up and slap your high school history teacher and scream at him/her "Why didn't you tell us this in history class?"
I devoured Mr. Swanson's book relatively quickly... I finished it on August 19th. I then continued on with my reading on Abraham Lincoln with Doris Kearns Goodwin's large tome, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which took me all of 3 whole weeks to read, and have, today, just finished. Ms. Goodwin has succeeded at creating something more than just a biography or a social/political historical text. She paints an intimate portrait of Abraham Lincoln through his relationships with his rivals for the 1860 presidential election who he later chose to assemble as his cabinet.
There are a couple of other books I have yet to read, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln and and Jean H. Baker's, Mary Todd Lincoln, which I will read hopefully before the end of the year, but first I need a break - from nonfiction - a break from the Civil War - so I'm going to switch gears and read Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found.
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