Goodreads asked Gary F. Bengier:

If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?

Gary F. Bengier I’d travel back to the world of The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane. The American Civil War has fascinated me since childhood. There is the towering figure of Abraham Lincoln. It was a time of great dissention and disunity, driven by fundamental questions about values and the direction forward (perhaps much like our own time). Lincoln found a path through, simultaneously redefining the meaning of the equality written in the founding Declaration of Independence and Constitution. (Lincoln at Gettysburg, by Garry Wills, is an excellent book describing the impact of this speech in this evolution.) I would visit with these fellow Americans from an earlier time, as they made the decisions that shaped the Republic for a new direction. That knowledge would be valuable, as we navigate a difficult century.

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