Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: fugitive orator, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, New Salem (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Like Paul and Steven Kendrick, authors of the recent Douglass and Lincoln, Stauffer has to scale up to achieve book size, since the men’s personal relationship consisted of just three meetings. Stauffer does that partially by using the Kendricks’ method of chronicling Douglass’ criticisms of Lincoln and partially by presenting a dual biography couched in the theme of the self-made man. As he hits the mile markers of the men’s rise from nothing, Stauffer, an English professor, often speculates about what each man “certainly” or “would have” thought about events in their lives (such as Lincoln’s supposed homosexuality, of which Stauffer is convinced, despite acknowledging there is no explicit evidence). This casts his narrative more as historical essay than straightforward history. Stauffer also emphasizes what he regards as key features of the men’s interaction, such as a friendship, perhaps genuine, perhaps diffident, growing out of Lincoln’s incremental adoption of the abolitionist position championed by Douglass. A work well worth the attention of students of emancipation. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

"John Stauffer's GIANTS is a lyrical, insightful treatment of the fascinating relationship between two geniuses, one a politician and the other a radical reformer. Both Lincoln and Douglass heard the music of words in their heads as few others, and Stauffer has an ear for the two of them in harmony. That they started in such different places ideologically and yet moved together at the critical moment of emancipation makes this a timely and important book. Stauffer brings the tools of literature and history to bear on this comparison with unmatched skill." (David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Frederick Douglass' Civil War and A Slave No More )

"In this stunning book, John Stauffer has given us the most insightful portrait of either Lincoln or Douglass in years. In graceful prose, he tells a moving story of the two men who dominated Nineteenth century American life -- as allies across the racial divide, friends who drew common inspiration from hard scrabble beginnings and a love of language, and fellow travelers on the road of American self-making. Giants is simply must reading!" (Richard S. Newman, author of Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers )

Like a daguerreotype, which nineteenth-century Americans thought captured not simply surface appearances, but peoples' souls, this book moves beyond biography to allow us to recover the inner lives of two utterly uncommon common men. This is the most insightful book about race and friendship in the nineteenth century that I have read. It's poignant and perceptive, a book to be savored, a book that will last. (Steven Mintz, Columbia University, author of America and Its Peoples: A Mosaic in the Making )

"John Stauffer's collective biography of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln stands apart from other biographies by focusing on how each man continually remade himself, with help from women, words, self-education, physical strength, and luck. In the process Stauffer gives us the texture and feel--a "thick description"--of the strange worlds that Douglass and Lincoln inhabited. The result is a path-breaking work that dissolves traditional conceptions of these two seminal figures (Lincoln the "redeemer" president, Douglass the assimilationist). He reveals how Douglass towered over Lincoln as a brilliant orator, writer, agitator, and public figure for most of his life. He shows us how words became potent weapons for both men. And he tells the poignant story of how these preeminent self-made men ultimately converged, despite their vastly different agendas and politics, and helped transform the nation." (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University, author of The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Twelve; 1St Edition edition (November 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446580090
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580090
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #145,091 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping and poignant book, October 21, 2008

By	E.I. Jones "Isaiah" (Cambrige, Ma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (Paperback)

In this beautifully written, lyrical book, Stauffer tells the story of the two preeminent self-made men in American history: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. He gives new understanding to the concept of self-making, a central metaphor in the American experience, and reframes our understanding of these two literary and political giants who rose up from slave and dirt poor backgrounds through language. Using words as weapons, they reshaped their world and gave inspiration and hope to future generations. GIANTS will make you laugh, it will bring you close to tears, and it will show you what's possible through hard work, faith, luck, and the power of language. It will give you the courage to continue striving, to remain audaciously hopeful even in the face of daunting odds, and to continually remake yourself, much as Douglass and Lincoln did. It is a book for our time.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read for a very long time, November 6, 2008

By	F.L. Jenkinson (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

As the nation's preeminent scholar of interracial friendship, John Stauffer turns in Giants from his previous prize-winning work on abolitionist friends to offer the first collective biography of the two preeminent self-made men in American history: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. That previous book, The Black Hearts of Men, was a hard act to follow but Stauffer goes even further here in Giants. Vivid, insightful, exceptionally well-researched and beautifully written, Giants restores to both mythic figures their complexity, ambiguity, and humanity, giving us an entirely fresh vision of two individuals who transformed themselves before they could transform society. Just as exciting, though, is the parallel narrative of national identity. As Stauffer reflects one giant off the other, we see in their intersecting lives a national journey toward the Second Revolution of the 1860s. This braided story of Lincoln and Douglass, one of change and self-making, alliance and conflict, faith and loss, is the nation¿s own story of bonds and betrayals during the nineteenth century. In fact, while other books might focus on Douglass and Lincoln's politics during the Civil War, only Stauffer examines the bigger picture: the ways they made and remade themselves and the nation their lives, loves, friendships, and the whole nature of love and friendship in the Civil War era. He weaves together themes of historical memory, race, gender, loyalty and forgiveness, empathy, outsiders, and the boundaries of the personal and political. The book therefore gives us a deeper, fuller picture of both men's lives and characters, and also a window on a whole era. This is history and biography written in glorious techicolor: set against Douglass, Lincoln comes alive anew - and vice versa - but so too does the intense drama of the time. And that history is a living drama: after the election of Barack Obama, a man who is said to transcend race but also has finally replaced Lincoln (and Clinton) as the nation's first 'black president,' has publicly grappled with the changing nature of his own friendships, and acknowledges the political and personal inspiration of both Douglass and Lincoln, we might find in Stauffer's dazzling page-turner a framework for understanding the story of Obama and ourselves in 2008. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant as a Powerful Novel, November 5, 2008

By	John Wood (Vermont) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a brilliant and deeply moving book. There is no reason for me to repeat the praise others have so justly given it, but I would like to mention one feature that has not yet been pointed out. Stauffer's prose reads with the same brilliance of a powerful novelist's prose. I hate to use a cliché, but I couldn't put it down. I opened it planning to read a bit and then go on to other things I had to do that afternoon. But I read into the evening and then the following days until I quickly finished it. It is not merely the beauty of Stauffer's prose style that pulls the reader in, but also his skillful handling of the two narratives he unfolds. Even though I knew the general facts of both men's lives, I was captivated by the way Stauffer developed their characters, and I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next. John Stauffer is not only a major historian, he is also a great story teller.