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LINCOLN ON WAR

Name: LINCOLN ON WAR
Author: Harold Holzer
ISBN: 978-1-56512-378-6

edited by Harold Holzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2011

A wisely chosen, expertly arranged collection.

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One of the world’s foremost Lincoln scholars offers a selection of the president’s writings and remarks on war, its conduct, trials, horror and meaning.

From his inauguration to his assassination, Lincoln fulfilled the role of commander in chief so skillfully as to become a model for succeeding presidents—reason enough, Holzer (Lincoln and New York, 2009, etc.) argues, to understand clearly the Lincoln record. For this project’s purposes, the author divides the president’s career into three parts: the young Lincoln, a period that included his brief, volunteer captaincy during the Black Hawk War and his stint as a dovish Congressman opposed to the Mexican War; the presidency from 1861 to ’62, during which Lincoln struggled to master warfare’s tools and tactics, to govern his military and civilian subordinates and to shape public opinion; and the war’s final years, when the slaughter only increased before Lincoln’s will and wisdom finally prevailed. From speeches and letters (sent and unsent), grand declarations, official messages and proclamations, orders, telegrams and instructions, hasty memoranda, informal notes and revealing private comments, Holzer assembles the president’s thinking on war, prefacing each selection with helpful remarks providing necessary context. Some of these documents are famous—e.g., the Gettysburg Address—while others are obscure. Some contain deathless rhetoric since memorized by all Americans, while some are merely homespun words (e.g., his battle advice to U.S. Grant: “Hold on with a bulldog gripe [sic] and chew & choke, as much as possible”) that demonstrate simultaneously Lincoln’s untutored prairie origins, his talent for the arresting phrase and his military resolve. All combine to illustrate the Holzer’s thesis that Lincoln, without ever taking the field, waged war with “the most powerful weapon at his disposal: his pen.”

A wisely chosen, expertly arranged collection.

Pub Date: April 12, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-56512-378-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT
by Harold Holzer

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PRESIDENTS VS. THE PRESS
by Harold Holzer

- BOOK REVIEW
MONUMENT MAN
by Harold Holzer

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)