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4.5
With Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Dr. David Kent has accomplished something never done before: he has created a true Swiss-army knife of Lincoln biographies and much, much more. For the average adult, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America is a perfect introduction. The text is precise, concise, compelling, and never condescending. Kent gives readers just enough to fully understand the many different aspects of Lincoln’s complicated life without overwhelming them. In fact, very little of Lincoln’s life is left unexamined, and even though Kent clearly admires Lincoln he does not place him on a pedestal above criticism. This is no hagiography.For the very young reader, where the text might not yet be fully appropriate, there are pictures, pictures, and more pictures. Hundreds of them (paintings, lithographs, newspapers, maps, tintypes, sketches), many in full color, that easily keep one’s attention. For those who prefer graphic novels, Kent has regularly incorporated portions of a Lincoln graphic novel throughout the book. But that’s not all. In my opinion, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, is the first great biography ever written for young adults (grades 6 – 8), and is now my recommendation for that age group. No previous biography is close, and that’s really saying something.The whole idea of this book is to serve as an introduction to Abraham Lincoln, and Kent doesn’t leave the reader hanging in this respect either. There are dozens of suggestions for further reading in the categories of General, Childhood and Education, New Salem, Politics, Loves and Family Life, Lawyer, Slavery, President and Civil War, and Assassination and Legacy. I have read the vast majority of them and most are excellent recommendations. Kent also provides links to major Lincoln organizations, museums and libraries, digital research collections, and Lincoln-related historic sites. As if this were not enough, this unique book has a spectacularly low price: $11.96 on Amazon and $9.98 at Barnes and Noble.Undoubtedly, Kent will receive some criticism for suggesting that the modern Democratic Party has a better claim to Lincoln’s mantle than the current Republican Party. However, one has only to rise above a tribal mentality to see that what Kent argues is objectively true, occupies a very small section in the book, and that he isn’t pretending that the Democratic Party is perfect. His contention that, “The Republican Party of the early twenty-first century bears more relationship to the anti-immigrant nativist Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s than the pro-Union, anti-slavery party of Lincoln” (p. 231) is both troubling and hard to argue with given the foreign and domestic policies of the current administration. Which leads us to the penultimate question: Is the United States worth saving? Kent believes that Lincoln would tell us that it is, that we are still, “the last, best hope of earth.” There is nothing like this book on the market and I highly recommend it.
