The Lincoln Reader [Vintage 1947] [First Edition, First Printing] Angle, Paul M. (Editor And Introduction)

Fine condition gray cloth boards with a maroon front cover facsimile Lincoln signature, gold spine lettering within a maroon and gold block border contained within a good condition photographic dust jacket. Includes Acknowledgments; Foreword; Epilogue; References; Bibliography and Index. Illustrated with two sections of black-and-white photographic plates. The dust jacket has edgewear chips at the jacket spine, rear upper edge and right jacket front edgewear (see photographs). All pages are in fine unmarked condition and the binding is exceedingly tight and square (see photographs). "The Lincoln Reader is a full-length portrait of Abraham Lincoln that has been almost a century in the writing. An Indiana boy in a linsey shirt - and little more - was "kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time," and years later wrote of the incident in his autobiography prepared for a presidential campaign. The boy became a lawyer and politician. As he practiced on the Eighth Court Circuit of Illinois, fought for political prominence, and led the "Long Nine" through stormy legislative sessions, he impressed his contemporaries as a man among men, and they set down what they saw. The lawyer became a national figure, then a sad and wise Civil War President; and representatives of government, of the military, and of the leading newspapers of the day wrote of his life, both public and private. The President was assassinated, and a martyr who had been loved and hated by his people was analyzed over the years by many of the great biographers and scholars. It is from all these works that Paul M. Angle has drawn a new, unique portrait of Abraham Lincoln. One hundred and seventy-nine passages and Dr. Angle's running comment blend into a single, vivid narrative of Lincoln's story from his birth to his assassination. The Lincoln Reader possesses and intimacy which recalls the spirit of Lincoln's own times, but it also possesses the detachment of modern historical scholarship. Only in such a book is it possible for contemporaries like Isaac N. Arnold, Horace White, and Carl Schurz to report faithfully the bitter Lincoln-Douglas debates, and for James G. Randall then to place them dispassionately and brilliantly in their proper historical perspective. The poet Carl Sandburg tells of the birth of a baby boy, the love of Lincoln for the ethereal Ann Rutledge, the memorable address at Gettysburg. A gifted political reporter, Murat Halstead, recreates the Chicago nominating convention of 1860. A member of Lincoln's Cabinet, Gideon Welles, entrust high government secrets to his diary. Mrs. Lincoln's cousin, her seamstress, and a girl in her teens reveal life in the White House. In all, sixty-five authors are represented. As the only complete and authentic retelling of the saga of the life and times of Lincoln in one volume, The Lincoln Reader is more than an adventure in reading. Other lives either skip or skim whole episodes, or cover all the ground in any number of volumes from two to ten. The Lincoln Reader is a Lincoln library in itself." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.