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Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas

Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas
By Allen C. Guelzo

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This title offers a look into the mind of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was a skilled politician, an inspirational leader, and a man of humor and pathos. What many may not realize is how much he was also a man of ideas. Despite the most meager of formal educations, Lincoln's tremendous intellectual curiosity drove him into the circle of Enlightenment philosophy and democratic political ideology. And from these, Lincoln developed a set of political convictions that guided him throughout his life and his presidency. "Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas", a compilation of ten essays from Lincoln scholar Allen C. Guelzo uncovers the sources of Lincoln's ideas and examines the beliefs that directed his career and brought an end to slavery and the Civil War. These essays reveal Lincoln to be a man of impressive intellectual probity and depth as well as a man of great contradictions. He was an apostle of freedom who did not believe in human free will; a champion of the Constitution who had to step outside of it in order to save it; a man of many acquaintances and admirers, but few friends; a man who opposed slavery but also opposed the abolition of it; and, a man of prudence who took more political risks than any other president. Guelzo explores the many facets of Lincoln's ideas, and especially the influence of the Founding Fathers and the great European champions of democracy. And he links the sixteenth president's struggles with the issues of race, emancipation, religion, and civil liberties to the challenges these issues continue to offer to Americans today. Lincoln played many roles in his life - lawyer, politician, president - but in each he was driven by a core of values, convictions, and beliefs about economics, society, and democracy. "Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas" is a broad and exciting survey of the ideas that made Lincoln great, just as we celebrate the bicentennial his birth.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #453289 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-01-26
  • Released on: 2009-01-07
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 232 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Allen Guelzo is one of the finest Lincoln scholars of our generation, and this book of essays reveals once again a unique combination of impeccable scholarship with a wonderfully readable narrative style.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln



“Written in an easy, flowing style, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas is a valuable compendium of the ideas driving some of our most important historical inquiries into Lincoln’s life and times. This first-rate collection is a significant contribution to the literature on Lincoln.”—Brian R. Dirck, author of Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809–1865

About the Author
Allen C. Guelzo, the author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College. He is a member of the National Council for the Humanities and a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize, for Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.

Customer Reviews

Thoughts on Lincoln3
In this year of scores of new books on Abraham Lincoln, I think others are of better value and more informative for the common reader. (The first book of this year's crop I would recommend is a biography, "A. Lincoln" by White. If one is really interested in the Emancipation, then buy Professor Guelzo's excellent "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation", 2004.)

Professor Guelzo is an expert on this great man and some of these essays are very good (such as the ones on the war powers of a president and on the Emancipation Proclamation) but there are others that really are for a more specialized readership (such as the ones on prudence and the doctrine of necessity.)

As an example from one essay on community-men: "But the jeremiads of Etzione, Bellah, and other 'new communitarians' were not actually all that new. The nineteenth-century founders of scientific sociology--August Comte, Max Weber, Emil Durkeim, and especially Ferdinand Tonnies--all contrasted the new industrial nation-states of the late 1800s with their medieval and traditional predecessors, and usually to the disadvantage of the former." And this feeds directly into a short discussion of the German terms "Gemeinschaft" and "Gesellschaft."


While this is not a bad book by any measure, I just have trouble recommending a collection of previously issued essays, in a book priced at about the same level as a new general biography or other original work. Especially in a publishing year flooded with material on Mr. Lincoln.