And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House Large Print)

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Besides the skillful and readable writing, one measure of the scope and depth of this biography is to review the bibliography. In addition to the expected extensive listing of books and scholarly papers, there are 23 sermons Meacham used as resources along with books on race, faith, prayer, the Scottish Enlightenment, and morals. With smell it was the same as it was with touch— like touch That being the case, historians need to chill out and let the people of the past be themselves, instead of shoehorning them into our present fraught conversations about race. Of course Lincoln is crucial to a historically-informed conversation about this topic, but we should not necessarily set ourselves in judgment over him unless we feel sure that, placed in his position, we would have held more enlightened views. This is an impossible counterfactual to prove, and therefore we should let his deeds speak for themselves and save our judgmental breath to cool our porridge. Taken all in all, which is how we should take him—all in all—he was a human being who sought to do right more often than he did wrong.” Jacques says (pg 72-73) that he lost the memory of his parents faces and began to see people in unusual ways—they might “look” like a bracelet, some that seemed to be like music, some that had teeth that filled their faces. How would you “see” someone close to you if you couldn’t see them?

When Jacques first goes blind, he tries to see as he used to see and is filled with despair. But then he says he realizes he was “looking too far off, and too much on the surface of things.” What does he mean by this? In what ways are we “blind” in a positive way? In what ways are we “blind” in a negative way?At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. Meacham's book is, in one sense, a prolonged argument against the assertion that Lincoln was a racist. This says so much about our current cultural moment, that the American president who moved heaven and earth and permanently transformed the country in an effort to maintain the union and (yes, secondarily) end slavery, is now as suspicious in the minds of some as actual-slaveowner Thomas Jefferson. Lusseyran was born in Paris, France. He became totally blind in a school accident at the age of 7. [1] [2] He soon learned to adapt to being blind and maintained many close friendships, particularly with one boy named Jean Besniée. [3] At a young age he became alarmed at the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and decided to learn the German language so that he could listen to German radio broadcasts. By 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, he had accomplished this task. [ citation needed] [4] Meacham is a successful historian and now he takes his turn with Abraham Lincoln. I have read quite a bit about the civil war and Lincoln but surprisingly never a biography of Lincoln so it was time. I don't count Team of Rivals which was great but had a different approach than a straight biography.

In his captivating new book, Jon Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time. And There Was Light brilliantly interweaves the best of gripping narrative history with a deeper search for the complex interplay among morality, politics, and power in a life, in a democracy, and in an America ripped apart over slavery. Here Meacham takes us to the heart of the president who shaped events at 'the existential hour.' In doing so, he fortifies us to meet our own." - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Wakeman, Rosemary (2009). The Heroic City: Paris, 1945-1958. U of Chicago P. p.243. ISBN 9780226870175. What do you make of Jacques’ treatment of women? Is it respectful? Does it make women seem too foreign? Lincoln became both hated and revered. For the slaveholders, this was a clash of visions bound up with money, race, and even faith. And Lincoln was maturing and his vision was expanding. “Once, when a Republican congressman from Massachusetts accused Lincoln of having changed his mind, Lincoln replied, ‘Yes, I have; and I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.’”

Amazing book by an amazing man. Jacques Lusseyran went blind as a young boy after a seemingly innocuous accident at school. I’ve never before read the memoir of a blind person and his account of how he adapted to his new world and what it entailed was a deeply fascinating education. Even had the Nazis not arrived in Paris where he lived this would have been a compelling memoir. But the fact he then forms one of the first resistance movements cranks up the tension tenfold. The mind boggles at what he achieves. One of the most moving features of this book is his depiction of his boyhood friends - Jean, Georges and Francois. All three follow him into the resistance. We of course know he survives the war but we don’t know if his friends do and he makes us so fond of them that we’re praying they too make it. This looks unlikely when the entire organisation is arrested and eventually transported to Buchenwald concentration camp. There was a traitor in their midst. If you don't normally read books about History, I would not start with this one. It's dense and it's written in a way that supposes you already know alot about the Civil War and Lincoln. Most of the stuff I know about the Civil War, I learned from Ken Burns. This book gave me a complicated sense of hope that as a country we've been through worse and survived, but also a sense of how fragile society is and how it all could've just as easily gone down a different path had this courageous, moderate, principled man not been the right person for the job at the right time. In his captivating new book, Jon Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

What do you make of Jean? Have you ever known anyone like him? Do you think the author’s depiction is fair and accurate? Or is Jean glorified? Considering the plethora of books about Lincoln, why another? One reason is because this is by a historian who will not disappoint readers of history with this superb narrative. Understanding Lincoln is valuable to our times because, as Meacham writes in the Prologue, “ . . . while Lincoln cannot be wrenched from the context of his particular times, his story illuminates the ways and means of politics, the marshaling of power in a democracy, the durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to help shape events.” (p. xxviii) At the beginning of this review I referred to today's January 6 Committee hearing. I might add here that yesterday I listened to “The Argument,” a podcast from the New York Times. The topic under consideration was whether the United States is headed towards a second civil war. The discussion was thoughtful, serious, and — of course — inconclusive. This podcast was also on my mind as I wrote this review. Not all correspondences between those years and our own were so obvious, of course (though Meacham does direct the reader’s attention to the fact that Lincoln, fully expecting to lose his bid for reelection, made it clear that he would accept the results regardless of the outcome: “This is due to the people both on principle, and under the constitution. Their will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all.”).His famous letter to Horace Greeley, in which he seemed to suggest he’d be fine with slavery if it meant the Union would be preserved (the letter “might seem callous but was in fact well calibrated," Meacham writes, since "without Union there could be no emancipation"). When being accused of changing his mind – “Yes I have, and I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln In April 1945, he was liberated; 990 of his group of 2000 inmates survived. [8] After the war, Lusseyran taught French literature in the United States and wrote books, including the autobiographical And There Was Light, which chronicles the first 20 years of his life. He died together with his third wife Marie in a car accident in France on July 27, 1971. [9] Awards [ edit ] Lincoln’s journey also involved a religious evolution. Raised in the Baptist church which was abolitionist in its preaching, Lincoln had a life journey from being raised Baptist followed by a belief in a greater being, ultimately attending a Presbyterian church in Washington DC during his presidency. Lincoln slow journey evolved with the death of his first child to continued study of the Bible and conversion ultimately to feel that the Bible and god were averse to slavery and led him to often refer to scripture in his speeches and writings. A masterful, highly readable biography . . . In an era when autocracy is on the march, this timely book sheds a bright light on Lincoln’s role as a paladin and vindicator of democracy.” —Michael Burlingame