![]() Excess is cut away, leaving a clean narrative that is bracing in its directness. To read along in such a chronicle is like watching an expert carver give shape to something otherwise formless or burdened by a profusion of material. Freehling’s chronicle traces Lincoln’s life up to the Civil War, followed by an epilogue that summarizes his major decisions during the war years. Freehling’s “Becoming Lincoln,” the answer is notable clarity and concision and an especially shrewd account of Lincoln’s political formation. Is it risky to think of Lincoln as a mythic hero. But any new work faces the question: What is being added to the Lincoln literature? Donald’s Lincoln is anything but the larger-than-life conquering hero whose sublime historical achievement was to have saved the Union and to have freed the slaves and whose apotheosis is monumentally evinced in that awesome, brooding memorial in Washington. There is always room for another, of course. Among the 16,000-plus books on Lincoln, there have been many superb ones, some of them long (e.g., the 10-volume 1890 opus by John Nicolay and John Hay) others short, such as James McPherson’s lean biography of 2009 and others midsize, like David Herbert Donald’s single-volume classic, titled simply “Lincoln” (1995). ![]() ![]() Another account of Abraham Lincoln? Aren’t there enough of them? Actually, no. ![]()
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