Father Abraham

Father Abraham: Lincoln and His Sons
by Harold Holzer
232 pages
Boyds Mills Press

Publisher's description:

Abraham Lincoln was devoted to his country - and to his family. President Lincoln called America a "House Divided" but he struggled to keep his own house united. It would prove to be an impossible task. Sickness, loss and family tensions overwhelmed Abraham, Mary, and their four sons. Opening up the Lincoln family album, noted Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer highlights the family's heartaches and happiness. Illustrated with archival photographs and backed by extensive primary source material, this compelling portrait illuminates the private lives of four generations of a prominent American family.

My comments:

Despite the length, this was a fairly quick, easy read. It was also enlightening, since I only remember learning about Tad Lincoln in school and not Robert, Eddy or Willie. I learned, for instance, that my belief that Tad was the president's favorite son was probably due to the fact that he lived longer than his beloved brother Willie, and thus had more opportunities to pose for photographs with his father.

What kind of a father was Abraham Lincoln? He was frequently absent because of work. When he was home he doted on his younger sons, but not on his oldest son Robert. If this lack of affection had deleterious effects, they are not evident in Holzer's account. Robert cared for his mother and Tad after his father's murder, and ended up being the only son to survive into adulthood and have children of his own.

Plenty of photographs of the Lincolns appear throughout the book, helping to make the large pages fly by. Captions include interesting information about the circumstances surrounding each picture that I greatly appreciated. I was especially impressed by the photo of Tad that the little scamp altered with a drawn-on mustache (p. 120). Picture credits on page 229 reveal that several come from Holzer's own collection. Many others were supplied by the Library of Congress, and the included ID numbers can be used to locate the photographs at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/.

Mary Lincoln, who I've most often heard described as Lincon's "crazy" wife, is also featured prominently throughout the book. Holzer's view is more nuanced: she liked to decorate and entertain, and the deaths of her sons and husband affected her very deeply. Well-chosen photographs show the contrast between her earlier, fashionable dresses (P. 111, very smiliar to this one) and the plain black dresses she wore exclusively after the assassination.

A generous bibliography, extensive index and source notes are appended. Holzer is a renowned Lincoln scholar, so while I trust that he knows what he's talking about, I was disappointed that his notes refer only to the work where a quote may be published without elaborating further on it's source.

Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life

Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life
by David Adler

140 pages
Published by Holiday House

Publisher's description:
Popular biographer David A. Adler recounts the exciting life of escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in 1818 and raised on a Maryland plantation under brutal conditions, Frederick Douglass against all odds grew up to become a famous orator, journalist, author, and advisor to U.S. presidents. Many contemporaries found it hard to believe that he was an escaped slave with no formal education. Douglass was also controversial. He urged slaves to revo0lt and befriended the abolitionist John Brown. A pivotal figure in U.S. history, he helped Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation and was an ambassador to Haiti.

My comments:
Adler provides an accessible introduction to the life of abolitionist and civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglass that will hopefully inspire young people to seek out Douglass' own autobiographies. Adler includes direct quotations of Douglass' own work along with research conducted through other sources, including books and newspapers from the time.

Many black and white photographs and illustrations grace the pages of the book, including portraits of Douglass and his family members, friends and contemporaries, depictions of slave life, posters, letters and newspaper clippings (including some from Douglass' own paper).

Adler's focus is primarily on Douglass' public life rather than his private life, although he does provide in-depth coverage of his childhood as a slave. Adler often lets Douglass speak for himself through his autobiographies; a wise choice since Douglass' writing is so eloquent. Of Douglass' two marriages and five children, I got just the basics. I read far more about his abolitionist activities in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to covering Douglass' life, Adler also discusses major events tied to his life, like the insurrection led by John Brown, the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Back end materials include a timeline, chapter notes, selected bibliography and index. There are also picture credits, which (I was happy to see) are actually presented in a readable format and font size. The chapter notes are important because much of the text relies on Douglass' own autobiographies. The notes tell readers the titles and pages where each quotation can be found. Adler also provides additional interesting information (such as a portion of a letter to a Pennsylvania newspaper following the passage of the 15th Amendment) that perhaps wouldn't have fit with the main text. The selected bibliography includes a number of books and newspapers. The index is quite extensive and includes names, places, major events and many topics such as foods and religion.

The Horrors of Andersonville

The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War Prison
by Catherine Gourley
192 pages
published by Lerner Publishing Group

Publisher's Description:

Conditions at Andersonville were indeed deplorable. The soldiers drank from polluted water and ate meager rations—mainly bug-infested cornmeal and bacon, which was often consumed raw, as there was little firewood for cooking. While some prisoners managed to make tents or shanties, many had to survive in the open without blankets or adequate clothing. Disease was rampant.

The camp had other dangers as well. Guards could shoot prisoners for just reaching across the deadline—an internal border 15 feet from the stockade walls. Some prisoners turned against each other in hopes of earning extra rations. And for a time, a gang called the Raiders preyed on fellow prisoners.

Of the nearly 45,000 prisoners that came to Andersonville, more than 13,000 died. When the Civil War ended, many people felt outrage. Was the camp commander Captain Henry Wirz ultimately responsible for these horrors? Or was he unfairly executed as a scapegoat for the atrocities of the camp?

Using diaries, letters, official U.S. government war records, media of the time, and other primary source documents from both Confederate and Union soldiers, author Catherine Gourley pieces together the life and death stories of Andersonville, revealing that the horrors of war include far more than what happens on the battlefield.

My Comments:

Andersonville prison is one element of Civil War history that slipped through the cracks of my formal education. I hadn't heard of it until a high school student needed help finding books about it for a history project. At first I was confused, thinking that it was somehow connected to the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. Actually, it was a prison in Georgia where Union captives were held by the Confederacy from February 1864 to the end of the Civil War. By all accounts, Andersonville was truly horrible. Originally intended to hold 10,000 prisoners at a time, the population swelled to more than 30,000 in August 1864. There simply wasn't enough food, water, space, medicine, shelter or clothing for anybody.

Not being familiar with the prison other than from reading this book, I can't speak to its veracity. I can say that it's derived from a variety of well-documented sources including the diaries and memoirs of inmates, eyewitness accounts that were published in local and national newspapers and magazines of the time, and records of the U.S. War Department. Gourley also presents a balanced view of what went on within the prison - for instance, the infamous killing of a crippled inmate is presented from several conflicting points of view. She also highlights harsh conditions in Union prisons for confederate soldiers like Elmira (also known as "Hellmira") through effective use of text boxes.

The writing is very engaging and the layout and design make it very easy to follow. Page and chapter breaks and even the placement of the shaded text boxes preserve the narrative flow. I even like the old-school font and subtle color scheme (deep blue, black, white and shades of gray).

The many illustrations and photographs are both relevant to the story and well-captioned. Captions for illustrations that appeared in newspapers, for instance, include source and contextual information. A couple of amazing drawings of the prison were actually drawn by inmates in their diaries.

The index at the end is very useful, as are the selected bibliography and further reading. I like the "cast of characters" at the beginning and end, however I felt that some people were left out who maybe should have been included, and the inclusion of others left me wondering why they hadn't been mentioned more in the text.

The source notes are useful, however I found that I needed to reference the bibliography to decipher some of the abbreviations. Another small quibble is that the reader has to assume that the number before each note is the page number. It would have been nice if "page" had been typed at the top of the first number column, just for clarification. It appears that, at one point, each note had been assigned a unique number, because I discovered two inexplicable superscript numbers while reading the text (the first one is "76").

One other complaint is the occasional use of parentheses to explain certain terms that someone (author? editor?) felt young adults would not understand. Some of these parenthetical definitions may be useful, but others are just annoyingly condescending - for instance, I can't imagine any teen not knowing that the eagle is the national bird. Overall, I felt they detracted from the book, but not enough to ruin it.

Your Comments?