Product Description

The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.

By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18102 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743299633
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
A former professor of Greek at Yale University, Wills painstakingly deconstructs Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and discovers heavy influence from the early Greeks (Pericles) and the 19th century Transcendentalists (Edward Everett). The author also probes Lincoln's decision to rely more on the Declaration of Independence than the U.S. Constitution, a decision Wills says represented a "revolution in thought." He speaks effusively of the 272-word address: "All modern political prose descends from [it]. The Address does what all great art accomplishes. [I]t tease[s] us out of thought." Wills' book won the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

From Publishers Weekly
Wills ( Inventing America ) combines semantics and political analysis in this account of the most famous speech in U.S. history. He puts Lincoln's words in their cultural and intellectual contexts, establishing the contributions of New England Transcendentalism and the Greek Revival to the structure and the substance of the address. He also interprets the speech as revolutionary, since it's a speech, too for in it Lincoln bypassed as is, seems that Wills, not Lincoln, is bypassing the Constitution to justify civic equality and national union on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. Wills's analysis of the matrix of Lincoln's text is more convincing than his present-minded critique of "original intent." Nevertheless, he makes a strong case for his argument that the concept of "a single people dedicated to a proposition" has been overwhelmingly accepted by successive generations of Americans. BOMC, History Book Club and QPB alternates; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The award-winning author, who has dissected John F. Kennedy ( The Kennedy Imprisonment , LJ 2/15/82. o.p.), Richard Nixon ( Nixon Agonistes , LJ 8/70), Ronald Reagan ( Reagan's America , LJ 2/1/87), and the basic texts of the American Revolution ( Inventing America , LJ 6/15/78, and Explaining America , LJ 2/15/81, both o.p.), now takes full measure of the Gettysburg Address. In an original reading, Wills argues that Lincoln's short speech revolutionized the conception of America, achieving with words a cosmic nationalism that could not be won by bullets alone. He examines the rhetorical roots of the address in the Greek classics, transcendentalism, the rural cemetery movement, and Lincoln's own love of cadence and grammar. Most importantly, he reveals the speech as a calculated political and rhetorical act--rather than the casual remarks of popular myth--whereby Lincoln redefined constitutional precepts in America, challenging the constraints of limited rights with the moral force of equality. Another tour de force that will cause much discussion and argument. Essential for college and major public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/92.
- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Lincoln the Radical
Literary prizes are handed out every year, but true worth is manifested by actual readers going out and buying their books year after year. Nearly a decade has passed since Garry Wills won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for "Lincoln at Gettysburg," but the magnitude of his achievement is measured by the continued interest which book lovers have lavished on this thoughtful and debate-stirring work of history. Wills situates the Gettysburg Address in the Greek Revivalism exemplified by Edward Everrett (the forgotten featured speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetary), as well as in the Transcendentalist movement of Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He goes on to demonstrate the inherant radicalism of Lincoln's 272 immortal words, imbued as they are with the dangerous notion that all men are created equal. Wills argues convincingly that the Gettysburg address hijacked the narrow readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution put forward by the southern rebels; through his words, Lincoln succeeded in placing these founding documents on the side of the angels by insisting that liberty and equality rather than sterile legalisms about states rights were the true basis of the grand experiment of the founders. In so doing, America's greatest President changed the history of the nation forever, influencing politics and policy right down to the present day. Huzzahs to Mr Wills for disinterring the radical hidden within the Great Compromiser!! And thanks to the prize committees for getting it right for a change.

Indispensable, superbly written Lincoln scholarship.
This Garry Wills masterpiece is a suitable work of scholarship for America's greatest speech. He breaks down the Gettysburg Address line by line, thought by thought, not in linear fashion but according to five separate themes. He marks a place for Lincoln's speech in the tradition of funeral oratory, lays bare the antecedents in Greek rhetoric, and illustrates how the pitch-perfect brevity of the address marked a fundamental shift in American public speaking. Most crucially, Wills makes a thoroughly cogent case for Lincoln as the second Jefferson, responsible for the modern acknowledgement that the Declaration of Independence, with its claim (a claim its author didn't even believe) that all men are created equal, is the true founding document of the United States, rather than the Constitution (which in legal fact is the founding document), which shamefully kept silent on the fate of the "peculiar institution" that led to civil war. Wills's book is staggeringly erudite; he dazzles even when he leaves the poor reader's understanding far behind. The information he includes on historical context is compelling and will be new to even committed Civil War buffs. The book should be required reading in any course on American history or rhetoric and public speaking. Five stars aren't enough.

Brilliant Scholarship and Fascinating History
Wills carefully recreates the world of Lincoln's time in retelling the story of America's greatest speech. In the course of painting the intellectual, social, political, and military canvas that forms the background for the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery, he convincingly put forth his thesis: that the Gettysburg speech powerfully shaped the course of American history -- in ways that were much more profound than any piece of legislation, Supreme Court ruling, or other overt political act. Lincoln's speech not only defined what the Civil War was about, but also defined what the results of the war should be -- and because of the Gettysburg Address -- would be. The "better angels of our nature" must prevail not merely in re-uniting the disparate states, but in fact in redefining the American union and calling the nation to "a new birth of freedom".

Well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize, this is inspired exegesis of some of the most inspirational words in American history. It should be required reading for every citizen who casts a ballot.