The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America - Hardcover

Neely Jr., Mark E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674511255 ISBN 13: 9780674511255

Verlag: Harvard University Press, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Mark E Neely Jr

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Críticas:

Neely knows a very great deal about Abraham Lincoln. Even better, he knows how to distill that knowledge for the benefit of the rest of us. "The Last Best Hope of Earth" is a wonderfully clear, wonderfully concise, wonderfully satisfying look at what Lincoln meant to the Civil War generation, and what he should mean to us. -- Stephen W. Sears "Washington Post Book World" Neely examines aspects of Lincoln's life that are most often summarized in a paragraph or two, or exiled to the footnotes. He treats them in depth, and the result is a portrait of Lincoln without the hagiography...Reading this book, it's almost possible to hear Lincoln's real voice, to see him walk into a room. That's no small accomplishment for a biography. -- Patrick Reardon "Chicago Tribune" All of Neely's strengths come into play here, not only his deep knowledge of Lincoln's writings and positions but also his broader grasp of the issues and figures, both major and minor, of the period...In a time when the sense of America as a land of opportunity is being lost, when politicians are a despised class and when the American system itself is increasingly called into question, Abraham Lincoln still has much to say to us. Mark Neely's book will help us to hear him. -- David Traxel "New York Times Book Review" This tightly written and richly illustrated work is the best brief life of the sixteenth president. to provide a gracefully written introduction to Lincoln, with heavy emphasis on the presidential years. wonderfully clear, wonderfully concise, wonderfully satisfying look at what Lincoln meant to the Civil War generation, and what he should mean to us. hagiography...Reading this book, it's almost possible to hear Lincoln's real voice, to see him walk into a room. That's no small accomplishment for a biography.

Reseña del editor:

In this book, Mark Neely Jr provides for the general reader a compact biography of Abraham Lincoln based on new scholarship. Neely, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian, aims to recapture the central place of politics in Lincoln's life. Although he ultimately married and became a successful and prosperous lawyer, Lincoln chose a political career, and throughout his life, politics remained his first love. Yet in Neely's depiction of Lincoln, power was never sought for its own sake. Having triumphed over the hardscrabble circumstances of his youth in Kentucky and Indiana, Lincoln, early in his political career, tied his ambition to the search for solutions to the economic underdevelopment of the American West. And in the last 11 years of his life, Lincoln's political ambitions became yoked to a fierce nationalism and a keen moral purpose - the preservation of the Union and the demise of slavery. Lincoln could not remember a time when he did not hate slavery, or revere the federal system. He made his position clear in the decade leading up to his presidential election campaign, and a civil war erupted. Through Neely's eyes the reader sees the growth of this president's advanced ideas about military strategy, despite their price in blood; his husbanding of the resources of the home front, regardless of its cost in national treasure; and his complex defense of the Constitution, notwithstanding a momentary loss of civil liberties. The reader also sees Lincoln's dedication to the Emancipation Proclamation, while the fate of the republic and the future of four million black Americans hung in the balance.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Harvard University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0674511255
• ISBN 13: 9780674511255
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224