Author: William Lee Miller
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375701737
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 538
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Book Description
William Lee Miller’s ethical biography is a fresh, engaging telling of the story of Lincoln’s rise to power. Through careful scrutiny of Lincoln’s actions, speeches, and writings, and of accounts from those who knew him, Miller gives us insight into the moral development of a great politician — one who made the choice to go into politics, and ultimately realized that vocation’s fullest moral possibilities. As Lincoln’s Virtues makes refreshingly clear, Lincoln was not born with his face on Mount Rushmore; he was an actual human being making choices — moral choices — in a real world. In an account animated by wit and humor, Miller follows this unschooled frontier politician’s rise, showing that the higher he went and the greater his power, the worthier his conduct would become. He would become that rare bird, a great man who was also a good man. Uniquely revealing of its subject’s heart and mind, it represents a major contribution to our understanding and of Lincoln, and to the perennial American discussion of the relationship between politics and morality.
Author: Jean E. Friedman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
This study introduces a new perspective on Lincoln and the Civil War through an examination of his declaration of our national values and the subsequent interpretation of those values by families during the war. This volume is a completely new approach to Civil War history. Historians rightly regard Abraham Lincoln as a moral exemplar, a president who gave new life to the national values that defined America. While some previous studies attest to Lincoln's identification with family virtues, this is the first to link Lincoln's personal biography with actual histories of families at war. It analyzes the relationship that existed between Lincoln and these families and assesses the moral struggles that validated the families' decision for or against the conflict. Written to be accessible to students and the general reader alike, the book examines Lincoln's presidency as measured against the stories of families, North and South, that struggled with his definition of Union virtues. It looks at Lincoln's compelling case for democratic values—among them, justice, patriotism, honor, and commitment—first stated in his 1861 speech before Independence Hall. The work also uses case studies to demonstrate how virtue, as practiced in families, illuminated, contested, adapted, and even transformed his concept, giving new meaning to the "virtues of war."
Author: William Lee Miller
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400034167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
In his acclaimed book Lincoln's Virtues, William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's intellectual and moral development. Now he completes his "ethical biography," showing how the amiable and inexperienced backcountry politician was transformed by constitutional alchemy into an oath-bound head of state. Faced with a radical moral contradiction left by the nation's Founders, Lincoln struggled to find a balance between the universal ideals of Equality and Liberty and the monstrous injustice of human slavery. With wit and penetrating sensitivity, Miller brings together the great themes that have become Lincoln's legacy—preserving the United States of America while ending the odious institution that corrupted the nation's meaning—and illuminates his remarkable presidential combination: indomitable resolve and supreme magnanimity.
Author: Michael Burkhimer
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
ISBN: 9781581823691
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Few politicians have fascinated the American people as much as Abraham Lincoln. The 1990s witnessed heightened interest in the sixteenth president and a flood of books about him that continues to the present. A recent tally indicates that at least 14,000 books and pamphlets have been written about him. The last guide to the best Lincoln books was produced in 1946. Since then several thousand more titles have been published. As a result, anyone interested in reading about him faces a daunting task in seeking out the books that offer the keenest insights into the man and the legend and lore that surround him. Michael Burkhimer's 100 Essential Lincoln Books offers a guide to this vast body of Lincoln literature. He chooses books that are indispensable for both book collectors and readers intent on learning more about Lincoln. The importance of each work is outlined with an emphasis on how it has contributed to Lincoln studies. Burkhimer's criteria for selection are based on the book's originality, sources, interpretations, writing style, and overall contribution. Titles are arranged chronologically in order of their first publication, ranging from 1866 (Francis B. Carpenter's Six Months at the While House with Abraham Lincoln) to 2002 (William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues). The recent resurgence of interest in Lincoln is reflected in that almost one-third of the books described here have appeared since 1990. To further aid the curious Lincoln reader, each title is classified under a general heading, such as assassination, biography, family and genealogy, and reminiscences. Indexes of authors and headings are also included.
Author: Michael J. Gerhardt
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062877208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 598
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Book Description
A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership “Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." –H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround? As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time. Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
Author: Thomas L. Carson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316298507
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
Unlike many important leaders and historical figures, Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as a singularly good and morally virtuous human being. Lincoln's Ethics assesses Lincoln's moral character and his many morally fraught decisions regarding slavery and the rights of African-Americans, as well as his actions and policies as commander in chief during the Civil War. Some of these decisions and policies have been the subject of considerable criticism. Lincoln undoubtedly possessed many important moral virtues, such as kindness and magnanimity, to a very high degree. Despite this, there are also grounds to question the goodness of his character. Many fault him as a husband, father and son, and many claim that he was a racist. Carson explains Lincoln's virtues and assesses these criticisms.
Author: Stephen J. Vicchio
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 153264163X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
This work is a summary and analysis of Abraham Lincoln's religion. This study begins with a description of the earliest relations Mr. Lincoln had with religion, his parents' dedication to a sect known as the "Separate Baptists." By late adolescence, Lincoln began to reject his parents' faith, and he appears to have been a religious skeptic until his marriage to Mary Todd. After his marriage, he attended Protestant services with his wife and family, but there was little evidence that he was deeply religious in that time. Lincoln knew the Scriptures quite well, but it was not until the death of his two sons, Eddie in 1850 and Willie in 1862, that as the sixteenth president put it, "He became more intensely concerned with God's Plan for human kind."
Author: Jim Pingel
Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
ISBN: 1489730052
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 687
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Book Description
This book is written for those who love historical biography and want to grow as leaders in their professions and vocations. Combining a love for historical biography, faith, and leadership all in one book, The Lincoln Way, the Truth, and Your Life provides an innovative and interdisciplinary opportunity to learn about leadership from the life of America’s greatest president, the Bible, and candid introspection. Written in a thematic, stand-alone format, each chapter examines a particular aspect or focus of Lincoln’s life and explores what the Bible says in regard to each theme. After analyzing each topic from the lens of Lincoln and a biblical perspective, the reader is asked to reflect on the lessons learned in leadership and faith. This “three-in-one” book will not only share how Lincoln dealt with life challenges and opportunities and what God’s Word says about each life issue, but equip and inspire the reader to reflect on one’s own life and leadership walk moving forward.
Author: Phillip S. Paludan
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252056116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 102
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Book Description
The four new essays in Lincoln's Legacy describe major ethical problems that the sixteenth president navigated what can be learned from how he did so. The distinguished and award-winning Lincoln scholars William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip Shaw Paludan, and Mark Summers describe Lincoln’s attitudes and actions during encounters with questions of politics, law, constitutionalism, patronage, and democracy. The remarkably focused essays include an assessment of Lincoln's virtues in the presidency, the first study on Lincoln and patronage in more than a decade, a challenge to the cliché of Lincoln the democrat, and a study of habeas corpus, Lincoln, and state courts. On the eve of the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, Lincoln’s Legacy highlights his enduring importance in contemporary conversations about law, politics, and democracy.
Author: Mark K. Updegrove
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429933917
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Americans have long been defined by how they face adversity. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in how the nation's chief executive has tackled myriad issues upon entering the White House. The ways that U.S. presidents handle the vast responsibilities of the Oval Office determine the fate of the nation---and, in many cases, the fate of the world. In this fascinating narrative, presidential historian Mark Updegrove looks at eight U.S. presidents who inherited unprecedented crises immediately upon assuming the reigns of power. George Washington led a fragile and fledgling nation while defining the very role of the presidency. When Thomas Jefferson entered the White House, he faced a nation bitterly divided by a two-party schism far more severe than anything encountered today. John Tyler stepped into the office of the presidency during the constitutional crisis left by the first death of a sitting president. Abraham Lincoln inherited a divided nation on the brink of war. Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to quell America's fears during the depths of the Great Depression. His successor, Harry S. Truman, was sworn in as commander in chief at the close of World War II, and John F. Kennedy stepped into the increasingly heated atmosphere of the cold war. In the wake of Watergate, the first unelected president, Gerald R. Ford, aimed to end America's "long national nightmare." As the forty-fourth president takes office, Updegrove presents a timely look at these chief executives and the challenges they faced. In examining the ways in which presidents have addressed crises, Baptism by Fire illustrates the importance of character in leadership—and in the resilience of America itself.
