Lincoln

Rating:
Summary: Vidal Succumbs to Lincoln Myth
Review: "Lincoln" is literature, not history, Vidal's version of our 16th president is much more intelligent, conniving, and in command of events then the record suggests. It's still a great read.

Rating:
Summary: The greatest historical novel ever written
Review: ...and that is not hyperbole. As a monumental fan of both Abraham Lincoln and Gore Vidal, to see these two divergent giants merged into one book was a satisfying moment. Vidal is America's greatest essayist and one of her best fiction writers. His gifts are shown to best advantage in this masterful novel. Vidal brings an historian's knowledge of the subject to this book and blends it with a writing style that surpasses our most gifted scholar-historians. The result is a pure joy to read, an accessible vehicle in order to understand the greatest President in American history.

Lincoln purists understandably fretted about some of the historical license taken and the dialogue Vidal created. But Vidal remains absolutely true to his subject and shows that he grasped both Lincoln's prodigious intellect and pathos in a way many scholars have missed.

This is a must read book for anyone who admires Gore Vidal as a literary genius and recognized Lincoln as the preeminent American in history.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating presidential epic
Review: A competent historical novel seems easy to write -- after all, the story is already there; just dress it up with appropriate scenes of action and dialogue. However, a great historical novel, like Gore Vidal's "Lincoln," goes further and deeper into the motivations of its characters. It turns history into drama and historical figures into human beings, people that the reader can care about not because they really existed, but because the printed page has miraculously brought them to life.

"Lincoln" chronicles the turbulent last four years of the life of the sixteenth President of the United States. It begins in February 1861 with Lincoln arriving in Washington to take office as the chief executive of a nation in turmoil: Southern states are seceding from the Union, exacerbated by the failure of a Democrat to be elected President. Lincoln assembles a Cabinet that is quite divided on how to handle the imminent civil war: Secretary of State Seward has his eye on expanding the nation like an empire and thinks the secessionist states would rejoin the Union if Mexico (and eventually the entire Western hemisphere) were conquered; Secretary of the Treasury Chase is a staunch abolitionist who frets over how the war will be financed.

Lincoln is more concerned with the preservation of the Union than the complete abolition of slavery; he draws up the Emancipation Proclamation which frees the slaves in the Confederate states as a military necessity but allows the border states to keep their slaves as an incentive not to join the Confederacy. The war proceeds slowly and painfully as the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers stains the national landscape, while Lincoln struggles with imperfect generals commanding the Union army.

Lincoln's private life is also strewn with difficulty and heartbreak. Two of his sons have died while his youngest, Tad, is an insufferable brat; his wife, Mary Todd, is a spendthrift and always on the verge of insanity. Much of the novel is narrated from the perspective of Lincoln's personal secretary, John Hay, who observes the vicissitudes of White House intrigue with a sort of detached interest.

During the war, there is much espionage activity in Washington. Vidal focuses on a young drugstore clerk named David Herold who relays messages for Confederate spies and hangs out with the Surratts, a family of devout Catholics who are loyal to the South. Doing some side work as a theatrical stagehand, Herold meets a famous young actor named John Wilkes Booth who is also a Confederate symphathizer, even while he is making the rounds of fashionable Washington society. After Lincoln is re-elected in 1864, Booth resolves once and for all to punish this man he considers a tyrant, and the rest, of course, is history.

Vidal's Lincoln is a complex man. He is serious but calm and gentle, defuses the madness around him with a cynical sense of humor and a fondness for telling comical rustic anecdotes, and uses his pretenses as a mere timid country lawyer to disguise his ability to wield a dictatorial authority when pressed. And since this is a novel and not a textbook, Vidal renders a Lincoln who can be appreciated as a literary character and not just as an American monument.

Rating:
Summary: This book is thin and unfocused.
Review: After reading the reviews on this page, I was looking forward to reading this book. However, after getting about four hundred pages into it, I was completely dissappointed and frustrated. The book spends way too much time exploring what I perceive to be completely irrelevant storylines (i.e., the courtship of Kate Chase, daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury), yet deals with such events as the debacle at Fredericksburg with literally one passing line. Maybe I'm missing something, but this book seems to be more written toward being a made-for-TV miniseries than great historical fiction. I believe the only reason I gave this book even two stars is because I have an interest in the subject matter.

Rating:
Summary: Great History, Great Politics, Great Novel
Review: Andrew Delbanco says of this novel: "This novel will, I suspect, maintain a permanent place in American letters." I can only hope so; it certainly deserves it. The historical detail is perfect, yet never tedious, and with Vidal choosing which details to give us, we get the juiciest ones. This is a novel that will please history buffs, but it will also transform a reader into a history buff. (I found myself checking out biographies of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln from the library.)

If there is anything negative to be said about this book, it is simply that it is very long (657 pages, and they make full use of each page). This should not deter anyone from reading it. It just means you should buy it for yourself for Christmas and read it over the break. Or take it to the beach. Though I imagine a cup of coffee or tea and a blanket are more suited for this novel.

The Lincoln portrayed here is completely human, replete with humor, constipation, family quarrels, anxiety, wisdom--in short, a full and complex man. Scholars argue back and forth about whether Vidal has accurately portrayed Lincoln. This portrait is as accurate as any you'll find, but I promise you that no other will be this engaging and interesting. He even puts forth a believable theory about Lincoln's assassination (which he admits is largely conjecture in an afterword where he breaks down what parts of the novel are fictional and what parts factual).

I recommend this book to every history buff, to every literature buff, to every American.

Rating:
Summary: Great History, Great Politics, Great Novel
Review: Andrew Delbanco says of this novel: "This novel will, I suspect, maintain a permanent place in American letters." I can only hope so; it certainly deserves it. The historical detail is perfect, yet never tedious, and with Vidal choosing which details to give us, we get the juiciest ones. This is a novel that will please history buffs, but it will also transform a reader into a history buff. (I found myself checking out biographies of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln from the library.)

If there is anything negative to be said about this book, it is simply that it is very long (657 pages, and they make full use of each page). This should not deter anyone from reading it. It just means you should buy it for yourself for Christmas and read it over the break. Or take it to the beach. Though I imagine a cup of coffee or tea and a blanket are more suited for this novel.

The Lincoln portrayed here is completely human, replete with humor, constipation, family quarrels, anxiety, wisdom--in short, a full and complex man. Scholars argue back and forth about whether Vidal has accurately portrayed Lincoln. This portrait is as accurate as any you'll find, but I promise you that no other will be this engaging and interesting. He even puts forth a believable theory about Lincoln's assassination (which he admits is largely conjecture in an afterword where he breaks down what parts of the novel are fictional and what parts factual).

I recommend this book to every history buff, to every literature buff, to every American.

Rating:
Summary: Lincoln: An Outstanding Read for Lovers of History!!!
Review: As a student of history, I was attracted to LINCOLN by a social studies teacher. To date, it is the most time-worthy publication I have read! It allows the reader to feel as though they are present for all of the books happenings. It describes Abraham Lincoln as he really was; non-commital on the slavery issue. Perhaps the greatest of Vidal's achievements in LINCOLN is that it is in "novel" form. This allows all to enjoy it regardless of ones educational background. To put it bluntly, Gore Vidal's, LINCOLN, reminded me that one can learn just as much about a time period from a novel as one can from a textbook. LINCOLN is a terrific read!!!

Rating:
Summary: Lincoln made flesh and thought
Review: At the end of most books on Lincoln that I read, I reach the inevitable part concerning his assassination and start feeling squeamish. I'm tempted to not read any further because part of me hopes that, by not reading about the cowardly murder committed in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, it somehow will not have happened. Lincoln will have successfully completed his second term in office, Reconstruction will have been an entirely different animal than it turned out to be and this country would be vastly different as a result.

Reaching the end of Gore Vidal's masterful "Lincoln", I felt even more squeamish, but for a different reason: in this novel, I'd heard Lincoln speak, both to himself and to others; I'd walked with him through the corridors of the White House; looked on as he met with Grant, Sherman and Porter at City Point towards the end of the war; pitied him his domestic burdens of an unstable wife and and the loss of his youngest son, Willie; and I'd witnessed first-hand the insubordination - both covert and overt - of his Cabinet, his staff and his generals and wondered how any man so little supported could have achieved the return of the South to the Union. He had become my friend, my companion and, as Booth pulled the trigger of his gun, I ached for Lincoln and mourned his loss in the most intimate of ways.

A writer that can make a reader feel that way has, in my opinion, truly accomplished something. Vidal's "Lincoln" takes the reader back into history and makes him/her a part not only of events, but of the thoughts of all the major players during the Civil War. Emphasis is placed on events in Washington, DC, rather than on the battlefields, so one doesn't get much about Grant, Sherman, etc. until the novel's end. But, again, this is about Lincoln - the man, the husband and most of all, the canny, shrewd politician. Vidal shows him subtly manipulating his warring Cabinet members like so many pieces on a chessboard, then gives us another character (Secretary John Hay, for example) watching his Commander-In-Chief's actions and evaluating them.

Vidal's narrative style is that of a camera slowly circling the room, focusing first on one character then, as that character approaches or mentions another, easily moving to that next person, linking all the events of 1861-1865 into a long chain of inevitabilties, surging forward into the climax of the death of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre and his passing into legend and into history.

This novel gives us the MAN, who is often forgotten amid the laurel wreaths and marble statues. Lincoln hurt, laughed, plotted, prayed, grieved and, eventually, triumphed and Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" takes you along for the ride.

Enjoy! I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: a great book espcially for the history-impaired
Review: At the very least, it introduced this dumb american to a part of the history that I probably already should have been familiar with. To me, it was a great work of fiction, even though even I knew how the story ended. From page one I could not put it down no matter how hard I tried.

It, and Burr, were both fantastic. It was rather eye-opening to see that political shenanigans have been a part of this country since the day it was founded.

Rating:
Summary: Vidal's Finest Hour
Review: Even Gore Vidal can't take this icon down. Though he's done his best to submarine Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton, among others, he can't conceal his affection and ardor for our greatest national hero. He sides with his class on many occasions, primarily as regards Salmon Chase and William Seward. He treats both figures with even greater esteem than either of them actually merited. The secondary plot involving Chase and his daughter are particularly telling regarding Vidal's true feelings about class and ancestry. He is and always will be a snob, when it comes to family ties.

Yet despite the fact that his protagonist is a social parvenue and a political bumpkin in many respects, Lincoln emerges as truly three-dimensional and heroic in this novel, just as he has in history in general. There are so many Lincoln biographies out there that I almost have a problem in highlighting this one; however it really is Vidal's most earnest, least cynical work; as such it deserves and earns high praise.