LINCOLN AND THE CIVIL WAR

This collection of comments on Lincoln, subtitled ""A Profile and a History"", is termed by its editor an effort to help the average reader choose titles which may interest him from the vast mass of literature, new and old, on Lincoln and the Civil War. Bound together by critical and analytical editorial comments, the many selections, some standard and occasionally dull, some new and often exciting, include quotations from contemporary sources, excerpts from histories and biographies such as Sandburg's four-volume study of Lincoln and Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox, and the whole of Whitman's long poem on Lincoln's death: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. Although it gives a good if not unusual picture of Lincoln one wonders, in view of the plethora of existing and future Lincoln titles, if this particular volume is really necessary; its appeal will be confined largely to teachers of Civil War history and collectors of Lincolniana who should value it for its bibliography.