Reading With Lincoln

by Robert Bray

Through extensive reading and reflection, Abraham Lincoln fashioned a mind as powerfully intellectual and superlatively communicative as that of any other American political leader. Reading with Lincoln uncovers the how of Lincoln’s inspiring rise to greatness by connecting the content of his reading to the story of his life. At the core of Lincoln’s success was his self-education, centered on his love of and appreciation for learning through books. From his early studies of grammar school handbooks and children’s classics to his interest in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the Bible during his White House years, what Lincoln read helped to define who he was as a person and as a politician. This unique study delves into the books, pamphlets, poetry, plays, and essays that influenced Lincoln’s thoughts and actions.             Exploring in great depth and detail those readings that inspired the sixteenth president, author Robert Bray follows Lincoln’s progress closely, from the young teen composing letters for illiterate friends and neighbors to the politician who keenly employed what he read to advance his agenda. Bray analyzes Lincoln’s radical period in New Salem, during which he came under the influence of Anglo-American and French Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Paine, C. F. Volney, and Voltaire, and he investigates Lincoln’s appreciation of nineteenth-century lyric poetry, which he both read and wrote. Bray considers Lincoln’s fascination with science, mathematics, political economics, liberal social philosophy, theology, and the Bible, and devotes special attention to Lincoln’s enjoyment of American humor. While striving to arrive at an understanding of the role each subject played in the development of this remarkable leader, Bray also examines the connections and intertextual relations between what Lincoln read and how he wrote and spoke.             This comprehensive and long-awaited book provides fresh insight into the self-made man from the wilderness of Illinois. Bray offers a new way to approach the mind of the political artist who used his natural talent, honed by years of rhetorical study and practice, to abolish slavery and end the Civil War.  

Genres: American History

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I deem Lincoln [one of the most] Shakespearean "real people" there ever was; he thought so too, or so it seems to many. He read with ultimate purpose, closely and repeatedly with subsequent ability to recite extended passages of text and verse; and he was a masterful imitator/mime/voice, characters brought to life out of morose & melencholia. The Bible too. He used it carefully but brazenly when needed. And he was a supreme moralist after all. He got there [in big part] through reading.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lincoln is my favorite president, and it was interesting to learn about what Lincoln read and how it impacted him, but ultimately I couldn't finish this book. It was too dense and academic for me. I might try again to finish it at some later date, though.

[David Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Reading with Lincoln" is an expansion of Robert Bray's outstanding article in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. As such it goes into greater depth on books that Lincoln is known, or at least thought, to have read, and what he may have learned from them. This is an extremely valuable book for all Lincoln researchers and those with significant interest in Lincoln.

The book is not quite chronological in organization, with its five long chapters addressing subsets of Lincoln's life: education, young citizenship, his tragicomic melancholy, necessity and invention, and the role of the Bible and Shakespeare in his public and personal lives, respectively.

In each chapter Bray extracts a few of the books likely most influential on Lincoln's thinking and delves into what they had to say. In many cases, the discussion is more about the book being cited; speculation about what Lincoln may have gotten from it only occasionally interjected. In other cases, Bray provides examples of Lincoln's writings and speeches that clearly reflect the influence of his readings.

Bray's writing style is academic and scholarly. The diction can at times be excessively cumbersome, the flow sometimes disrupted to Google the online dictionary. This habit, while perhaps not unexpected from an English professor of his caliber, may limit the willingness of the public to embrace the book. That would be a shame, as the book provides much needed insights into the authors that influenced the mental development of our sixteenth president.

Overall, I found the book to be intense, but one that most Lincoln academicians and scholars would want to put on their "must-read" list. An appendix lists all the books that Lincoln likely read during his life.