David S. Reynolds | Penguin Books | 2021

Reviewed by Stu Halpern

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David S. Reynolds' Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times is a brilliant analysis of Lincoln's family, personality, and political positions within the context of his era. Reynolds, a professor in CUNY's Graduate Center, notes that while there are already 16,000 books about Lincoln, none attempt to demonstrate how he fit in, responded to and contrasted with the cultural winds of his time. Readers learn that despite the hardships Lincoln's family faced—his mother was born out of wedlock, his father was barely literate and Native Americans murdered his paternal grandfather—young Abraham did not grow up as poor as is usually believed. His father was a well-respected carpenter, and the family's landholdings were listed in their county's tax rolls as being in the top 20. Though he had a strained relationship with his father in later years, Lincoln inherited his physical strength and temperate nature from him, largely by avoiding alcohol consumption. Lincoln, whose later political rhetoric often rang in a biblical key, composed, as a young man in the 1820s, a faux-biblical poem called the "Chronicles of Reuben." In it, Lincoln mocks a man of the same name after the latter refuses to invite Lincoln to his wedding. (Lincoln's humor, a life-long trait, matched the scatological and bawdy style of his time.) Lincoln's own romantic pursuits are extensively documented, including his loves before his eventual wife, Mary Todd, whose notoriously difficult personality receives an extensive and sympathetic analysis. Lincoln's gangly and awkward appearance is fascinatingly contextualized within the context of the rise of P. T. Barnum and his human curiosities. "Just as Benjamin Franklin had won great popularity by posing publicly as the bumpkin Poor Richard," Reynolds writes, "so Lincoln performed as the lowly Uncle Abe. He was the humble American as political spectacle. His homely averageness was, in Hawthorne's words, 'exaggerated' and 'extravagant.'" Lincoln's progressive views on black liberation (contextualized within the racial theories of his time) are appreciated for their innovative nature, as is his support of women's suffrage over a decade before the famous Seneca Falls women's rights convention. Lincoln's kindness towards the American Jewish community is also noted, with one rabbi referring to the president as "rabbi Abraham" and crediting him with a Judaic spirit. Mary Todd's Spiritualism, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, his affinity for Shakespeare, and his frequency at the theater (including his invitation to an actor he was fond of, John Wilkes Booth, which went unanswered) are just a few aspects historically contextualized in the wondrous portrait that is Abe. Readers interested in leadership, the history of American culture, and the life of America's greatest president will be richly rewarded by this luminous volume. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.