Abraham Lincoln (Penguin Lives) [Hardcover]

Thomas Keneally (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0670031755 | ISBN-13: 978-0670031757 | Edition: First Edition

This self-made man from a log cabin-the great orator, the Emancipator, the savior of the Union, the martyr-was arguably our greatest president; but it takes a master storyteller like Thomas Keneally, author of the award-winning novel that inspired the film Schindler's List, to bring alive the history behind the myth. Acclaimed for his recent Civil War biography, American Scoundrel, Keneally delves with relish-and a keen, fresh eye-into Lincoln's complicated persona.

Abraham Lincoln depicts all the amazing man's triumphs, insecurities, and crushing defeats with uncanny insight: his early poverty and the ambition that propelled him out of it; the shaping of the man and his political philosophy by youthful exposure to Christianity, slavery, and business; his tempestuous marriage and his fatherly love. We see him, elected to the presidency by a twist of fate, unswerving in the grim day-to-day conduct of the war as his vision and acumen led the country forward. Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of its pivotal figure, his greatness etched even more clearly in this very touching human story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Keneally offers up a new volume in the popular Penguin Lives series of short biographies. Some writers appear to benefit from the forced brevity. Keneally, however, seems inhibited and constrained by the limitation in his life of Abraham Lincoln. Unlike his previous, lengthier nonfiction outings (notably The Great Shame and the recent American Scoundrel), his life of Lincoln reads not as a great illuminating narrative placing past events in a fresh perspective, but rather like a Cliffs Notes version of better books by such scholars as David Donald. The facts of Lincoln's life as related are both true and readable, but the author offers no new insights, no imaginative or interpretive leaps, no poetry. Keneally is at his best, perhaps, in presenting Lincoln in his final stage, a calculating and at times ruthless war leader. This is the Lincoln whom Keneally's "American scoundrel," Dan Sickles, knew best and with whom Keneally also seems to be pretty well acquainted. Still, all the other Lincolns here-the wilderness child, the prairie lawyer, the husband, the father, the fledgling politician-come across as little more than hollow robots walking doggedly from one well-known benchmark to the next, lacking that one element so essential to real life: a soul.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Abraham Lincoln was several times accused of "spirit-rapping," whereby he called on the dead to speak. Novelist and biographer Keneally has worked just such magic in his eloquent and insightful brief biography of America's most complicated subject. Like Lincoln, Keneally tells a good story, finding the right anecdote to make his case and never forgetting the moral of the tale. Keneally's Lincoln is a self-actuated farm boy made good by self-discipline, savvy instincts, wit, the wisdom acquired from courtrooms, friendships, and political huckstering-and luck. He is an individual of principle committed to promoting the self-made man through government support for economic improvements and opening a West free of slavery. Keneally recounts Lincoln's early missteps in romance, business, and politics and his self-doubts and depression as his star dimmed several times, and he concedes Lincoln's erratic course toward emancipation and a successful strategy for Union victory during the Civil War. But in the end, Keneally's Lincoln emerges almost as a "father Abraham" anointed for his great role in leading a chosen people toward redemption and their rendezvous with destiny. This is an epic compressed into a tightly written biography that all Americans might read with profit. Keneally's occasional tendency to let folklore stand as fact notwithstanding, there is no better brief introduction to Lincoln and his American dream. For all libraries.
Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (December 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670031755
• ISBN-13: 978-0670031757
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #705,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good Solid short Bio, September 12, 2004

By 

Thomas Stamper (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abraham Lincoln (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

After a bad experience with Tom Wicker's Penguin Lives book on Bush 41, I decided to give the series one more chance and got what I wanted with Keneally's Lincoln. I've read enough about the Civil War to have a decent understanding of Lincoln's Civil War years, but Keneally does a good concise job of leading the reader up to that point. This poor Lincoln could be compared to Job in so many ways. His wife Mary Todd would have been a handful for anyone, but circumstances resulted in him burying half his children from some disease or another. Lincoln then goes on to save the nation only to find a bullet.

Again and again in his career, Lincoln escaped his own ego in order to pursue the greater end. His homely self-effacing appearance and manner led many to underestimate him and he let them do so to win points later. You could argue that it won him the Republican nomination, because "smarter" men thought that they could control him. It was the same thing in his cabinet and with his commanding General, McClellan. Everybody wondered how this "idiot" could be in charge of the country. Some like McClellan never got wise, even after being roundly defeated by Lincoln in the 1864 election. Others like Stanton and Seward grew to understand Lincoln's brand of genius.

Like good literature, Lincoln dies at the end of the story rather than serving two more terms of mediocrity. Also like good literature, it was a southerner that killed the man, and the result of that action was a much harsher treatment by the radical Republicans toward the south than Lincoln would have cottoned too. As a reader of Shakespeare, Lincoln would have enjoyed the cosmic joke of it all.

Lincoln's greatness is without question so it's a little hard for an author to find fault with the man, but Keneally does what he can to present the full Lincoln and I enjoyed his 200 pages.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Introductory Lincoln, December 28, 2003

By 

Andrew Desmond (Neutral Bay, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abraham Lincoln (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

Having not been educated in the US where veneration of Lincoln is widespread, Thomas Keneally's biography of the famed president is a breath of fresh air.

There seems little doubt that Lincoln was a man of enormous vision and courage. He took on the vested interests of slavery and ultimately prevented the dissolution of the Union. Furthermore, his untimely death lifted his status to that of a martyr. In this case, however, his martyrdom is well warranted.

Keneally's work is an excellent starting point for any reader seeking an introduction to Lincoln. This book is part of a larger series covering a host of international luminaries. Lincoln's place in this pantheon is well deserved. The book itself is wonderful read for those wishing to understand Lincoln's place in history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really Good Overview, May 26, 2004

By 

John (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abraham Lincoln (Penguin Lives) (Hardcover)

I'm only a casual reader of history and biographies. I didn't want to read a thousand-page work about Lincoln's extraordinary life. I only wanted an overview, some sort of work to give me a sense of the man. For my purposes, this little biography by Thomas Keneally was a success. It's brief, but it hits all of the most important points of the presidents life. It captures the contradictions and conflicts that marked Lincoln's life, and it does so with, at times, soem true lyricism. Keneally is a good writer (though his fiction such as Schindler's List is much better) and particularly over the first part of this biography, that is evident. The biography only suffers during the last half when Lincoln seems to disappear behind Keneally's depiction of the war. I don't think Lincoln's great role and conflicts during the war were aptly shown. Also, the biography ended too abruptly with no attempt at summation. I know that the Penguin Lives reach for brevity, but this is one of the shorter books in that series. Keneally could have given Lincoln another twenty pages and still been under 200 pages. Nevertheless, this biography is good, certainly serving its purpose as an overview that will answer essential questions and incite further inquiry into life of one of America's greatest presidents.