Book Alert / Our Lincoln

Our Lincoln -- New Perspectives on Lincoln and his World, Edited by Eric Foner, Norton '08, $27.95, 336 pages, ISBN #0393067564. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

One of the keenest insights History Wire has gained in the four years of its existence is the unslaking thirst of American readers for books about Abraham Lincoln and his times. And while the fashion has been towards scathing, revisionist tracts about the grand old men of our nation's history, surprisingly few seem to be written about our 16th president. No wonder that polls on the subject usually show Honest Abe ranking 1st or 2d among our chief executives.

So the fact that 2009 marks the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth is just one more excuse for  new tomes on this transformational man. Yesterday we reviewed Fred Kaplan's Lincoln -- The Biography of a Writer. Today, we turn to a compilation of new perspectives on Lincoln, edited by Eric Foner. And publisher's advance notices assure us more are on the way.

Comprising the collection are essays by eleven historians: some well known, like James M. McPherson, who writes on Lincoln as commander in chief; and Mark E. Neely, Jr., on how Lincoln dealt with the Constitution and civil liberties; and others less well known, such as Manisha Sinha, who explores the topic of Lincoln and black abolitionists; and Harold Holzer on Lincoln as student, subject and patron of the visual arts. You'll see Holzer's name a lot this year -- he's the chair of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Other contributors include Sean Wilentz, James Oakes, Eric Foner, Andrew Delbanco, Richard Carwardine, Catherine Clinton and David W. Blight.