Honest Abe

Along with Hollywood and the rest of the world, I have come to embrace and be interested by our 16th President Abraham Lincoln. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s always been one of our most interesting presidents so it’s not like this is a new discovery. Only my interest in him has been newfound.


I wanted to know more when I saw a statue of him outside of a museum near my house. I knew he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and worked on the 13th amendment. I had read a book a number of years ago about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Lincoln. The book was mostly about the tracking of JWB after the event and not much about Lincoln himself. As far as person, I had no idea what he was like. Luckily someone else in one of my book clubs was equally intrigued by Abe.

During the summer months we try to read a fun book so I suggested “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” because it would be fun and maybe, just maybe, I’d learn something about Honest Abe. The book was quite clever and I won’t say much more than that about it because it would ruin the book. I did learn a few things about Abe that were later substantiated. He lost his mom at an early age, he didn’t have formal schooling and some other things (the obvious being that he was a vampire hunter – hehe).

It seemed as though the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know. At the next book club the other Abe Lincoln fanatic and I decided to offer “Team of Rivals” as our next book. It didn’t happen for that month. As news of the movie “Lincoln” started to pervade our cultural awareness, we offered it up again as an option. This time we all agreed and I started to read this immense book.

I was daunted by the size of the book and thought I would dread reading it, but I quickly got through 200 pages in a few days. It took a bit to make additional progress as I was reading it around the holidays. But I kept trying to sneak in some time to get through a couple of pages. I really wanted to continue reading which is saying quite a lot about a tome!

I ended up seeing “Lincoln” the movie while reading the book which was very helpful because Daniel Day-Lewis so thoroughly embodies the 16th President. There are moments now when I think of Lincoln the president and all I see is Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe. I was touched by the movie and rushed to finish the book thereafter. It was quite amazing. I cried when I finished the book as I did with the movie. There were times while reading the book that I wished I had known or met Lincoln – he was just such a fascinating and intelligent man. I now understand why so many people, beside myself, are mesmerized by the Illinois lawyer who was born in a log cabin.