Customer Reviews

Lincoln, Life-Size

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The idea was a good one: Publish a book presenting photos of Abraham Lincoln in their original format, and then include an enlargement to life-size of the face of Lincoln appearing in each of those photos. In this presentation, sad to say, the idea just does not work. The first problem with this book is that the pages are too small to contain the full, life-size image of Lincoln's head, including all of his hair. Was it not the whole point to do just that? In failing to publish this book in a format large enough for the purpose, the effort to present Lincoln as he would have appeared in life necessarily fails. The second problem with this book is that it includes too many photos of Lincoln that are not suitable for enlargement of the face to life-size without blurring the image to the point of uselessness. Two of the most striking examples of this involve the photos of Lincoln at Gettysburg and in his coffin. The life-size face of Lincoln in each case is rendered as nothing more than fuzzy blotches on a page that cannot be of use to anyone not looking at that page from a great distance. The third problem with this book is that the blurbs that accompany each of the photos contribute nothing to the project. A few of the photos of Lincoln in this book do lend themselves to the accomplishment of the book's objective. Most notably are the June, 1860 Hesler portraits. The book would have better served its purpose if greater care had been taken to focus on only those photos which, when enlarged to life-size, are capable of providing more, rather than less, detail and information about the face of Lincoln. There are a few, too few, striking examples of this in the book. However, the book contains far too many useless enlargements of Lincoln's face. For the next edition of this book, those useless enlargements should be eliminated and greater attention should be directed toward, and more informative text should accompany, the useful enlargements. If this were done, it would probably result in a volume with far fewer pages, but those pages could then be made large enough to truly present the face of Lincoln, life-size.

Although I can see the point of the Amazon reviewer who was disappointed in "Lincoln, Life-Size" in that many of the images presented are indeed blurry due to the enlargement process, I think this is a case of glass-half-empty versus glass-half-full. Yes, it would be wonderful to have a book filled with dozens of crystal-sharp photographs of Lincoln "life-size", but such a galaxy of photos does not exist. But what we do have, and this book presents, is a fascinating arrary of images that, with a few exceptions, contain that visual alchemy of recognition -- "there is Lincoln the man". The book conveys a powerful sense of the humanity of Lincoln. For those of this opinion, "Lincoln, Life-Size" will present hours of contemplation. As for size limitations necessitating cropping off part of Lincoln's air in the photos, I can live with that.

I could not put this book down. The pictures grew more facinating the longer I studied them. I am a Lincoln scholar, and therefore I go back to the book again and again, seeing more character and detail each time.

A really wonderful book of pictures of Lincoln taken during a short period of years. Yes....as some critics have said.....some pictures are blurry ...but remember these pictures weren't taken with a digital camera. Highly recommended

The idea for this book originally had me very excited. High resolution scanned images of Lincoln at life size. Unfortunately the concept falls apart, quite literally, when small images are enlarged beyond the resolving ability of the silver-based technology of the mid nineteenth century. As a result, there are many images in this book that appear as dark and light blobs. Looking at the open book from across the room does not improve the experience of these pictures. It takes great imagination to accept that these represent Lincoln, and the images could have been Grant smoking cigars for all I know.

There are many books available already with images of the face of Lincoln, some with even better paper quality which improves the experience. Others are more comprehensive showing Lincoln in every known photo. The text adds little to this available literature. It would have been much more interesting to learn of how the images survived and were "re-discovered" by scholars scrounging through old archives in many cases. This could have added measurably to what we know of these iconic images and made the photographic short-comings still tolerable.

The idea of photographic images of Lincoln showing his face in life size is pretty good. Some of the photos included were poor choices as they are blurry and do not reveal anything about Lincoln's features. Some enlargements turned out very well. The text was nothing earth shattering. I would like to see a similar book that delves more into the history behind each photo, including how it was discovered and any stories behind it.