Description
Book Synopsis"[A]n astonishingly interesting interpretation…Fox is wonderfully shrewd and often dazzling." —Jill Lepore,
New York Times Book ReviewTrade Review"Dazzling…Filled with fresh ideas about our greatest president's legacy." -- Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
"Highly readable…Fox skillfully depicts how varied have been the uses that Americans have made of their greatest president." -- Michael Burlingame - Wall Street Journal
"There’s a slew of books to commemorate [Lincoln’s] life and legacy. This is among the best of them…[Fox] creates an intimate, moving history of Lincoln that goes beyond the typical chronology of Lincoln’s life. Instead, he focuses on the symbolism of Lincoln’s physical form and the remembrance and veneration of that form in the cult of Lincoln that persists to this day. A fascinating examination." -- Beth Colvin - The Advocate
"One of our foremost cultural historians, Richard Wightman Fox, has added a new dimension to our understanding of Lincoln’s place in American culture…He charts the ways Americans have remembered and imagined Lincoln and what the ups and downs of historical memory tell us about ourselves." -- Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
"In his sweeping discussion of Lincoln’s physical body (how people viewed it during his lifetime or interpreted it after his death), Richard Wightman Fox deftly traces the high-stakes cultural battle—waged in poetry, prose, art, and film—over the meaning of Lincoln, man and myth, from his day to our own." -- Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877
"With subtle analysis and supple writing, preeminent cultural historian Richard Wightman Fox is especially insightful on the African American experiences of Lincoln. Readers will sense from the first page that this is a book they will want to linger over in their delight." -- Ronald C. White Jr., author of A. Lincoln: A Biography
"Elegantly woven…Fox does more than just document Lincoln’s impact; he explains why he has mattered." -- Adam I. P. Smith - Times Literary Supplement
"It might be logical to think that there is nothing more to say about Abraham Lincoln. Richard Wightman Fox’s elegant, fascinating, and moving book shows how wrong that is. With prodigious scholarship and beautiful prose, he makes clear why and how Lincoln is alive to every generation of Americans." -- E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart
"A finely crafted and beautifully written extended metaphor in which the life and death of Lincoln become the symbolic essence of the ebb and flow of the American republic." -- Edward Cuddihy - Buffalo News
"Excellent…Fox shows how Lincoln turned his ungainly features into an asset, a corporeal manifestation 'of republican simplicity and American self-making.'" -- Matthew Price - Newsday
