Viswas raghavan biography of abraham lincoln by carl sandburg

Abraham Lincoln , biographies , book reviews , Carl Sandburg , presidential biographies , Presidents , Pulitzer Prize. Like Lincoln, Sandburg was a son of the Illinois prairie and as a consequence he harbored a lifelong interest in the sixteenth president. Sandburg died in at the age of Periodic interruptions in the flow allow the author to explore cultural or political topics which could probably be placed nearly anywhere in the series.

Unfortunately, while most of the big picture moments will strike the reader as familiar, much of the surrounding detail will not. A casual reader will often get lost in unimportant details and miss the forest for the trees. Matters which might be dispatched with a paragraph, or perhaps a page, are routinely covered in ten or twenty pages.

On the other hand, with such breadth and depth Sandburg is able to provide insight into topics rarely found in other Lincoln biographies.

He previously spent seven years as president of the University of.

The congressional plot against Secretary of State Seward is particularly interesting and the chapter describing Robert E. Grant at Appomattox is unrivaled. Unfortunately, the text itself leaves Lincoln two-dimensional and his relationship with his family largely unexplored. For reasons unknown, Sandburg seems determined to avoid humanizing Lincoln, his wife or his children none of whom become familiar after this lengthy series.

Although valuable messages and insights are contained in the series, they are widely scattered and well-hidden beneath mountains of minutiae. Though likely of great interest and value to a historian, the series will prove overwhelming and esoteric for a more casual reader. Impressive in scope, it is equally overwhelming and without enough moments of clarity and revelation to be of interest to the modern reader.

May 28, at pm.