Lincoln's Body: A Cultural History

Fox (history, Univ. of Southern California Dornsife; Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography) offers a penetrating exposition of the hold that Abraham Lincoln still has on American history, our minds, and perhaps our future. What the author does in such a compelling and insightful manner is examine how Lincoln—considered by so many of his contemporaries (friend and foe alike) as "ugly," "ungainly," and beyond "homely"—becomes our emancipator, our liberator, our martyr, and, eventually (and most fundamentally) our symbol of nationhood. At the hands of Fox, we see Lincoln remembered and mostly revered (albeit at times reviled) in print, in memorial, in song, in statue, and in plays and films as the substantive, symbolic figure about whom proper understanding and appreciation is so crucial for defining where we've been, who we are, and where we're headed. The quest for making sense of Lincoln is not quixotic; it's a search for understanding ourselves, whether the issue is slavery or immigration. Fox convincingly asserts that Lincoln's physicality, personality, private thoughts, and public rhetoric confront each generation with the daunting task of remembering Lincoln and renewing democracy.