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Lincoln's Body

Audiobook
Nonfiction: History/Biography
Unabridged   12.75 hour(s)
Publication date: 02/09/2015

Lincoln's Body

A Cultural History

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781622316403
Digital Download ISBN:9781622316410

Summary

A groundbreaking, magisterial study that explains why, like Walt Whitman, we "love the President personally."

In a stunning feat of scholarship, insight, and engaging prose, Lincoln's Body explores how a president ungainly in body and downright "ugly" of aspect came to mean so much to us.

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Product Description

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble "conciliator." Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist union, downplaying emancipation. Among both black and white liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, Lincoln was derided or fell out of fashion. Recently, Lincoln has been embodied once again (as idealist and pragmatist) by outstanding historians, by self-identified Lincolnian president Barack Obama, and by actor Daniel Day-Lewis all keeping Lincoln alive in a body of memory that speaks volumes about our nation.

Reviews/Praise

“Pete Larkin’s conversational narration style enhances the experience. Recommended for Civil War buffs and students of Lincoln lore.”
      —Library Journal [May 15, 2015]

Author Bio

Richard Wightman Fox is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the author of Jesus in America and Trials of Intimacy, among other books. He lives in Venice, California.