As the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth approaches, these provocative essays constitute a perfect sneak preview of the likely...
An award-winning historian assembles 12 essays from distinguished scholars commenting on Lincoln—the man, the emancipator and the chief executive.
Taking full advantage of the current “golden age of Lincoln scholarship,” Foner (History/Columbia Univ.; Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction, 2005, etc.) commissions contributions both from Lincoln specialists and from historians who’ve helped reshape our understanding of 19th-century America. With a few exceptions—David Blight’s piece on the modern Republican Party’s mangling of Lincoln’s legacy is a bit overheated, and Catherine Clinton’s commentary on Lincoln’s family attempts too much in too little space—this cross-pollination succeeds. The essays are highly readable, mercifully free of academic cant and at least hint at new Lincoln discoveries, large and small. Harold Holzer makes a minor but intriguing point with his discussion of the influence of artists, painters and sculptures on famous photographic images of Lincoln. Manisha Sinha usefully recovers the names of black abolitionists—Frederick Douglass was not alone—who helped push Lincoln toward emancipation. Mark Neely takes a timely look at the fate of civil liberties under Lincoln during wartime. Especially strong contributions come from James McPherson, who reminds us of the centrality of Lincoln’s role as commander in chief; Foner, who examines the controversial and surprisingly vibrant movement for colonization of black Americans in Africa or elsewhere; and Richard Carwardine, who incisively discusses Lincoln’s evolving religious beliefs. The most notable essays are Andrew Delbanco’s beautiful discussion of Lincoln’s pioneering use of American English; James Oakes’s brilliant analysis of the various rights Lincoln believed governed race relations; and Sean Wilentz’s explication of the influence of Jacksonian democracy on Lincoln’s politics, as promising a vein as any for new assessments of our 16th president.
As the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth approaches, these provocative essays constitute a perfect sneak preview of the likely scholarly agenda.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06756-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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