ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
Bring together the titans of American journalism as they existed in the 1850s and 1860s and Abraham Lincoln under the careful and thoughtful direction of renowned Lincoln expert Harold Holzer, and you have a highly readable and fascinating book that often has the intrigue of a great novel without all the fiction.
The author takes a massive subject--one that would be daunting to some of the rest of us--and distills it into essentially the story of four men--Lincoln, Henry Raymond, New York Times; Horace Greeley, New York Tribune; and, James Gordon Bennett, New York Herald. This is the story of how these men worked together and sometimes tugged at one another from different directions.
I thoroughly enjoyed this account of journalism, the presidency, and the nation in crisis. Lincoln constantly dealt with the reality of confederate spies and the use of confederate or opposition papers to publish information useful to Lincoln's enemies. Lincoln and his war department were in no way afraid to close newspapers when it became clear that the data being published was undermining Union efforts toward victory. According to Holzer, some 200 papers were temporarily or permanently closed in one year of the civil war. One of those whose work was watched and ultimately closed was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, the writer of the poem that has since become the national anthem of the United States. Ironically enough, Key's grandson was imprisoned inside Fort McHenry, the very fort whose flag had inspired his grandfather to pen the immortal words of the anthem.
If you're looking for a book that creates stick figure characters of Lincoln and the giants of New York journalism, this isn't your book. Holzer does an excellent job of bringing all of these characters to life without making Lincoln some kind of villain for closing the papers and the journalists some kind of heroes for nobly pressing forward despite the heavy-handed opposition of government info gatekeepers. Rather than focusing on the newspaper closures, this book looks at the turbulent tuggings among men who were larger than life and who had agendas often radically different from one another.
Although Holzer is a Lincoln scholar, this is not by any measure a book that is dry and dull. It is written for anyone with an interest in Lincoln and American journalism in general. Iwas neither bored nor confused by this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I read it with synthetic speech as opposed to the audio recorded copy. I first heard of the book on the Civil War Talk Radio podcast. While it is long, (more than 700 pages), it is ever so worth your time.
The author takes a massive subject--one that would be daunting to some of the rest of us--and distills it into essentially the story of four men--Lincoln, Henry Raymond, New York Times; Horace Greeley, New York Tribune; and, James Gordon Bennett, New York Herald. This is the story of how these men worked together and sometimes tugged at one another from different directions.
I thoroughly enjoyed this account of journalism, the presidency, and the nation in crisis. Lincoln constantly dealt with the reality of confederate spies and the use of confederate or opposition papers to publish information useful to Lincoln's enemies. Lincoln and his war department were in no way afraid to close newspapers when it became clear that the data being published was undermining Union efforts toward victory. According to Holzer, some 200 papers were temporarily or permanently closed in one year of the civil war. One of those whose work was watched and ultimately closed was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, the writer of the poem that has since become the national anthem of the United States. Ironically enough, Key's grandson was imprisoned inside Fort McHenry, the very fort whose flag had inspired his grandfather to pen the immortal words of the anthem.
If you're looking for a book that creates stick figure characters of Lincoln and the giants of New York journalism, this isn't your book. Holzer does an excellent job of bringing all of these characters to life without making Lincoln some kind of villain for closing the papers and the journalists some kind of heroes for nobly pressing forward despite the heavy-handed opposition of government info gatekeepers. Rather than focusing on the newspaper closures, this book looks at the turbulent tuggings among men who were larger than life and who had agendas often radically different from one another.
Although Holzer is a Lincoln scholar, this is not by any measure a book that is dry and dull. It is written for anyone with an interest in Lincoln and American journalism in general. Iwas neither bored nor confused by this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I read it with synthetic speech as opposed to the audio recorded copy. I first heard of the book on the Civil War Talk Radio podcast. While it is long, (more than 700 pages), it is ever so worth your time.
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