The Gettysburg Address

Rating:
Summary: The most important speech in American History (illustrated)
Review: As Gary Willis tries to indicate in his introduction to this illustrated edition of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," the reason it is the most important speech in American History is because until Lincoln made his few choice "remarks" at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Americans did not believe the principle that "all men are created equal" that is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. So while this is a sense that the Union Troops did not fight for self-determination, or to free the slaves for that matter, we now believe that they did and we do so because of what Lincoln said at Gettysburg (Willis develops this argument more comprehensively in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Lincoln at Gettysburg"). This is what historicans mean when they talk about how Lincoln elevated the war to a higher level.

The speech is only 272 words long and is illustrated with a dozen marvelously detailed etchings by Michael McCurdy (he calls them drawings in his afterword, but since they are white on black I think of them as "etchings"). McCurdy depicts not only Lincoln speaking at Gettysburg, but also the actual battle and Lincoln's idealized vision of America. If students do not have the opportunity to hear "The Gettysburg Address" read out loud the first time they encounter it, then this book is a reasonable substitute for the experience.

Rating:
Summary: Stark woodcuts communicate nobility and tragedy.
Review: I read this book aloud to my children. The text is simply the Gettysburg address, broken into phrases with an illustration for each thought. Two-thirds of the way through the book, I found myself weeping. The combination of Lincoln's eloquence and the illustrations touched me. I would recommend using this book to introduce students of any age to Lincoln's famous speech and the history associated with it.

Rating:
Summary: What a CROCK!!
Review: This book perpetuates the out and out LIES surrounding the Gettysburg address.

This quote says it all...

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history... the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it.

Put it into the cold words of everyday.

The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth.

It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue.

The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought *against* self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves."--

Rating:
Summary: What a CROCK!!
Review: This is an incredible book. The Gettysburg Address was something I had to learn in school, but reading this book brings the speech to life.

I makes you really think about what is being said and brings it more to life. I have visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Gettysburg Address is incredible in Marble but in this book it really makes you think about what happened during the Civil War and what it means to us today.

Rating:
Summary: The soul of America is in this speech
Review: What does Lincoln do at Gettysburg? Why are his words as moving today as they were when he uttered them?
I think that what he did is that he defined for America and Americans what it is, and what it means to be to itself. He did this in the most dignified and moving language imaginable with its deep Biblical cadences and its underlying tone of grief and dedication. He invokes the 'brave men living and dead'the heroic sacrifice of the war in order to urge a new dedication of freedom a new and higher realization of that fundamental human value which is so closely connected with the whole American enterprise. He defines not simply for those there, for those on that field the living and the dead, but for all American generations a ' new birth of freedom, so that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from this earth "