Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America

by Andrew Ferguson Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

Overview

Before he grew up and became one of Washington's most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff. Like so many sons of Illinois before him, he hung photos of Abe on his bedroom wall, memorized the Gettysburg Address, and read himself to sleep at night with the Second Inaugural or the "Letter to Mrs. Bixby."



Ferguson eventually outgrew his obsession. But decades later, his latent buffdom was reignited by a curious headline in a local newspaper: Lincoln Statue Stirs Outrage in Richmond. "Lincoln?" thought Ferguson. "Outrage? I felt the first stirrings of the fatal question, the question that, once raised, never lets go: Huh?"



In Land of Lincoln, Ferguson embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to opportunism and all manner of reaction in between. He attends a national conference of Lincoln impersonators in Indiana; seeks out the premier collectors of Lincoln memorabilia from California to Rhode Island; attends a Dale Carnegie-inspired leadership conference based on Lincoln's "management style"; drags his family across the three-state-long and now defunct Lincoln Heritage Trail; and even manages to hold one of five original copies of the Gettysburg Address. Along the way he weaves in enough history to hook readers of presidential biographies and popular histories while providing the engaging voice and style of the best narrative journalism.



Ultimately, Land of Lincoln is an entertaining, unexpected, and big-hearted celebration of Lincoln and his enduring influence on the country he helped create.

Editorial Reviews

Neither as flippant as Sarah Vowell in Assassination Vacation nor as self-serious as Bernard-Henri Lévy in American Vertigo, journalist Andrew Ferguson strikes just the right note in this rollicking road trip across the U.S. in search of our changing attitudes toward Abraham Lincoln. As he crisscrosses the continent, he uncovers views of the Great Emancipator that run the gamut from repugnance to obsession. In Virginia, modern-day Dixiecrats pledge to purge history of liberal distortion; impersonators at an Indiana convention get in touch with their inner Abe; and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, motivational consultants market the Lincoln leadership style. With grace, insight, and great good humor, Ferguson's big-hearted book illuminates as much about life in 21st-century America as about our iconic 16th president. It's a journey well worth taking.

William Grimes

The Land of Lincoln turns out to be a big place: bigger than Illinois, bigger even than the United States, stranger than anyone would have thought. Mr. Ferguson maps it expertly, with an understated Midwestern sense of humor that Lincoln, master of the funny story, would have been the first to appreciate.
— The New York Times

Harrold Holzer

Ferguson's cultural insights are vivid and penetrating. He is a gifted observer and terrific writer, at his best with his family in tow.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

The question that animates this original, insightful, disarmingly funny book is: how do Americans commemorate Lincoln, and what do our memories of him reveal about our visions of the good life? To discover the answer, Ferguson, an editor at the Weekly Standardand a Lincoln buff, made a long field trip, poking into many of the places where Americans have chosen to remember—or to forget—Honest Abe. He eavesdrops on the Lincoln Reconsidered conference, where a group of "Abephobes" aim to retrieve Lincoln's memory from the distortions of "liberal historians." He considers the "Disney aesthetic" of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and attends a convention of Lincoln "presenters" (otherwise known as impersonators). Ferguson is occasionally and unnecessarily snide, and a deeper examination of the changing place of Lincoln in mainstream historical scholarship would have added a great deal to the book. Still, Ferguson's conclusions are stirring. He finds Lincoln's meaning best articulated by Robert Moton, an educator whose parents were slaves. With great simplicity, Moton explained Lincoln's greatness: "...in a time of doubt and distrust... he spoke the word that gave freedom to a race and vindicated the honor of a Nation conceived in liberty...." (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Forbes

If you're the sort of reader who judges a book by its opening lines, you won't find anything more promising than the overture to ForbesLife contributing editor Andrew Ferguson's funny and fascinating new study, Land of Lincoln. "More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other American--nearly 14,000 in all--and at least half of those books begin by saying that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other American. This book, you'll notice, is one of them." Ferguson appears to have read a good number of those 14,000 before coming to realize that Lincoln, and his place in the American story, has been obscured behind "scrims of scholarly interpretation." What's more, 135 years after John Wilkes Booth busted a cap in the 16th president, Honest Abe has been hijacked for every possible ideological purpose, from pushing political baloney to selling shoe polish to promoting motivational workshops. There are so many interpretations of the Lincoln legacy that, as one museum official tells the author, "...I can give [Lincoln] to you any way you want, cold or hot, jazz or classical. I can give you scandalous Lincoln, conservative Lincoln, liberal Lincoln, racist Lincoln over easy or Lincoln scrambled." A lifelong Lincoln buff and Washington political reporter, Ferguson sets out to find the forgotten Abe, a trip that takes him on a captivating cross-country quest. He attends the opening of a Disney-inspired Lincoln theme museum, visits a wealthy Beverly Hills widow with a thing for Lincoln memorabilia. He sits in on a convention of Lincoln presenters (not "impersonators," please), and dragoons his own exasperated family for a rollicking cartrip to retrace the defunct Lincoln trail through Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Tagging along on the journey into Ferguson's Land of Lincoln is like taking an American history course with the coolest professor on campus. His gift is a hilarious sense of the absurd, but he's often able to draw poignancy and meaning from the absurdity. And what a wicked eye for detail. Describing Mount Rushmore, for example, Ferguson writes, "...George, Thomas, Theodore, and Abraham, snuggling cheek to cheek like a group of high
schoolers in a photo booth." You'll enjoy this trip, honest.—Patrick Cooke

Library Journal

New books about Abraham Lincoln appear so often that the unique merits of each demand scrutiny. Ferguson's book is not so much a study of Lincoln as it is a study of modern American attitudes toward the 16th President. It is also a voyage of self-discovery by a former Lincoln buff and skilled journalist who crisscrossed America to visit museums and memorials, to observe pro- and anti-Lincoln gatherings, and to interview Lincoln impersonators, collectors, and others, all while striving to assess Lincoln's legacy. The result is an engaging and frequently witty confrontation between past and present that reveals as much about modern culture as it does about Lincoln himself. Patrick Lawlor's narration is adequate but often seems rushed. This is a book that might be better read-especially in an illustrated edition. Recommended with reservations.
—R. Kent Rasmussen

Kirkus Reviews

A search for traces of the Great Emancipator in today's America. Weekly Standard senior editor Ferguson, an Illinois native, became a Lincoln buff at an early age. So protests against a proposed Lincoln statue in Richmond, Va., aroused his curiosity: Why do so many hate this revered president? He attended meetings of the protestors, as well as the dedication of the statue, and began to learn just how much baggage Lincoln still carries. The Richmond statue was paid for by a commercial collectibles company that planned to recoup its costs by selling miniature replicas of it. The anti-statue forces blamed Lincoln for everything wrong with modern America, big government and big business in particular. Inspired by the memory of what Lincoln used to mean to him, Ferguson decided to explore other Lincoln sites. He found his boyhood image of the Great Emancipator undercut by recent historians' new vision: Lincoln as a flawed, ambiguous figure posthumously co-opted to embody establishment values. The author was also disillusioned to find that the National Park Service does what it can to keep anyone from getting too close to the artifacts in the Lincoln historical sites under its auspices. And he was almost equally nonplussed by the Lincoln buffs who amass their own collections of artifacts, from signed documents to bits of cloth purportedly bearing bloodstains from the assassination. Ferguson handled an original copy of the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill. Finally, he took his family along the Lincoln Trail, visiting sites in three states. His narrative mostly records the depredations of the Park Service and the new historians, but the author manages, in the end, torecapture his faith in the Lincoln who means the most to him: the icon who inspires people around the world with a vision of freedom. Colorful, opinionated, openly hostile to the new historians-and great fun to read. First printing of 75,000; $75,000 ad/promo

From the Publisher

"A splendid book...so wonderful I am sick with envy." ---The New York Post

OCT/NOV 07 - AudioFile

When journalist Andrew Ferguson revisits the places that fostered his boyhood admiration of Abraham Lincoln, he discovers an assortment of opinions as disparate as the nation itself. Ferguson blends myths and facts in a friendly, unassuming tone, and Patrick Lawlor provides a folksy, energetic narration. Ferguson offers both sides of arguments that still rage around Lincoln's policies—over 140 years after his death. Lawlor delivers them with the appropriately sardonic words "scholars differ." From the Sons of the Confederacy in Richmond protesting a Lincoln statue to the 175 Lincoln impersonators in Indiana, from a leadership conference on Lincoln's management style to the Disneyfication of the Lincoln Library in Springfield—Ferguson's keen observations and Lawlor's witty narration express multiple views of the president who preserved the Union. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171270155
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/24/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

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