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The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln And American Slavery (2010)

by Eric Foner(Favorite Author)

4.08 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0393066185 (ISBN13: 9780393066180)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: It's nice to read a beautifully written and researched book about Lincoln that's not quite as throne-sniffy as others, but the basic premise of the thing seems completely implausible to me. The notion that Lincoln grew personally, rather than in terms of what he thought he could practically achieve politically without sinking the boat, with regard to his view of slavery isn't believable. He might have gradually accepted blacks folks' equal capacity for intelligence (along with the apparently radical notion that black people do not belong in tropical climates) a bit more as he aged, but even that seems debatable to me. All things considered, the notion that Lincoln didn't personally and privately harbor these ideas long before his presidency doesn't pass the smell ... moretest.
review 2: As mentioned in a previous review, I've spent the last few months studying under Eric Foner in his Civil War and Reconstruction course. I may be a little biased as I found him to be an incredible educator and lecturer, but his writing seems just as strong as these other pedagogical skills. This book deserves the Pulitzer seal, as it manages to display Lincoln's evolution as a politician with driving prose that turns the book into a page-turner, not usually the case for well-researched, insightful historical studies. As Foner remarked in class one day, there are enough Lincoln books to allow a reader to have any Lincoln desired. Foner demonstrates here that many of those various Lincolns were small parts of a complex and changing individual. Yet this book goes well beyond biography, and serves as a fantastic tool for a detailed lesson on the politics and events of 1850-1865. I cannot recommend this text enough to anyone with an interest in the period. less

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