Rate this book

The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation (2013)

by Jonathan Hennessey(Favorite Author)

4.35 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0061969761 (ISBN13: 9780061969768)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks

review 1: Ok, US History teachers, let me give you some advice. If you want your students to really remember the unit on the US Civil War and maybe even get caught reading ahead, ignore the textbook and get your students copies of this instead. Two words come to mind when thinking back on this book: thorough and deep. Don't let the title fool you. This is not just about The Gettysburg Address. Hennessey does an impeccable job of using the Gettysburg address as a framework to explain all the various issues that led up to the Civil War, how the Civil War played out, and how civil rights progressed in the US afterwards. So it includes an easy to understand but thorough exploration of the ways in which The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were at odds with each other and... more how that fueled the heated debates over states' rights. Then he explains how topography, climate, Western expansion, and cotton all added fuel to the fire, and also how slavery was intertwined in all of this. The Civil War is then the focus from first shots, through major encounters with a main focus on the action during the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln's slippery position as President receives attention as well as the Emancipation Proclamation, the lead up to the Gettysburg Address (and along with that the evolution of cemeteries and park areas in the US), and then the wrap up of the Civil War. Lincoln's death and the plotting of Boothe & his gang is given attention along with how their actions most likely hurt the South worse than if Lincoln had been alive to influence Reconstruction. The book ends following the civil rights development from post-Civil War to the 1960s events. I was super impressed by how Hennessey was able to include so many historic events and concepts and tie them all in seemlessly in this book. He does an incredible job of giving a broad picture view from the 1600s America to present, while showing how landmark issues and events all tied in to influence each other and the outcome of "big" events. I'm serious about US History teachers using this. It includes all of the main events (actually probably more) than most textbooks and presents it in a way that is concise, memorable, easy to grasp, and in a style such that students will think they're getting away with murder by reading a graphic novel during history class. Due to the language and battle scenes represented graphically, I would not use this below 5th grade.Notes on content: Around five or so mild to moderate swear words (mostly in quotes of historic people). No sexual content and no indecent pictures. The battle scenes are depicted with illustrations, but for the most part McConnell kept the gore to a minimum. Usually just bullets entering with a tiny bit of blood. There is one illustration of a pile of amputated limbs, but honestly they look very clean and more like hunks of ham set out at a butcher than real limbs. Famous pictures of Civil War battles are recreated, but again, gore is kept to a minimum, just showing people laying on the ground. There are a couple hangings illustrated as well.
review 2: This is quite an amazing work. I picked it up thinking I would find an accessible history of the Gettysburg Address, or at most, the Civil War. Instead it's a sophisticated argument about politics in the early days of American history. It's excellent and invigorating to read. It's amazing in its brevity of words and appropriateness of the graphic novel form. If I was teaching an early American history class, I would assign this right alongside the more "traditional" history texts. While many of Hennessey's points are stated as fact without the benefit of their well known counter-arguments, it's still both persuasive and instructive, as well as downright enjoyable. I could easily see a school assignment, from any level of school, being to unpack the arguments found in a single frame or page. The only negative I can really find with the form and function of the graphic novel was the necessary dissolution of footnotes, works cited, or any indication of the theoretical influences of Hennessey's argument. less

Download links for: The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation

Advertising