Synopses & Reviews
A brilliant work of historical imagination, Abe immerses the reader in the isolating poverty and difficult circumstances that shaped Abraham Lincoln's character. Marked by his mother's horrible death and the struggle to keep reading and learning in the face of his father's fierce disapproval, Richard Slotkin's Lincoln comes of age during a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, Lincoln and his companions see slavery firsthand and experience the violence -- and the pleasures -- of frontier settlements and the cities of Natchez and New Orleans. Transformed by what he has seen and done, Lincoln returns to make his final break with his father and to step out of the wilderness into New Salem -- and history.
Review
"A rich, satisfying coming-of-age story." —
The New York Times Book Review"This is docudrama intelligently distilled to the written page...a substantial achievment." —The Wall Street Journal
"Abe is an entrancing, highly imaginative yet historically rigorous account." —Chicago Tribune
Synopsis
In a brilliant work of historical imagination, award-winning historian Slotkin recreates the childhood of Abe Lincoln, including a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans.
About the Author
Richard Slotkin is the Olin Professor of American Studies at Wesleyan University. He is the author of
Gunfighter Nation and
Regeneration Through Violence, both National Book Award finalists, and
The Crater, a novel.