12/01/2014 So many books have been written about America’s 16th president that most re-tread familiar territory, yet historian Fox (Jesus in America) has struck gold with this unusual, finely crafted study. Proceeding from the assumption that Americans still love and revere Lincoln, Fox argues that the reasons underlying those feelings are rooted in the president’s physique. Though many found him physically unattractive, Lincoln’s body was claimed as a “symbol of republican simplicity and American self-making” by the American public while he was alive. That body took on new importance in death, elevating the assassinated president to martyrdom, and Fox provides riveting analysis of Lincoln’s funeral and the nation’s mourning. The final third of the book switches to the ways Lincoln has been remembered through the 21st century. Two television mini-series dedicated to him aired in the 1970s and 1980s, and for decades Disneyland featured a “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” exhibit. Hollywood produced its first Lincoln movie in 1930 and produced two more as recently 2012: one a prestigious Steven Spielberg biopic, the other a depiction of Lincoln as a superhero vampire hunter—making him a handsome leading man at last. Illus. Agent: Jill Kneerim; Kneerim, Williams & Bloom (Feb.)
"Excellent…Fox shows how Lincoln turned his ungainly features into an asset, a corporeal manifestation 'of republican simplicity and American self-making.'"
"There’s a slew of books to commemorate [Lincoln’s] life and legacy. This is among the best of them…[Fox] creates an intimate, moving history of Lincoln that goes beyond the typical chronology of Lincoln’s life. Instead, he focuses on the symbolism of Lincoln’s physical form and the remembrance and veneration of that form in the cult of Lincoln that persists to this day. A fascinating examination."
The Advocate - Beth Colvin
"Dazzling…Filled with fresh ideas about our greatest president's legacy."
"In his sweeping discussion of Lincoln’s physical body (how people viewed it during his lifetime or interpreted it after his death), Richard Wightman Fox deftly traces the high-stakes cultural battle—waged in poetry, prose, art, and film—over the meaning of Lincoln, man and myth, from his day to our own."
"One of our foremost cultural historians, Richard Wightman Fox, has added a new dimension to our understanding of Lincoln’s place in American culture…He charts the ways Americans have remembered and imagined Lincoln and what the ups and downs of historical memory tell us about ourselves."
"A finely crafted and beautifully written extended metaphor in which the life and death of Lincoln become the symbolic essence of the ebb and flow of the American republic."
Buffalo News - Edward Cuddihy
"It might be logical to think that there is nothing more to say about Abraham Lincoln. Richard Wightman Fox’s elegant, fascinating, and moving book shows how wrong that is. With prodigious scholarship and beautiful prose, he makes clear why and how Lincoln is alive to every generation of Americans."
"Highly readable…Fox skillfully depicts how varied have been the uses that Americans have made of their greatest president."
Wall Street Journal - Michael Burlingame
"Elegantly woven…Fox does more than just document Lincoln’s impact; he explains why he has mattered."
Times Literary Supplement - Adam I. P. Smith
"With subtle analysis and supple writing, preeminent cultural historian Richard Wightman Fox is especially insightful on the African-American experiences of Lincoln. Readers will sense from the first page that this is a book they will want to linger over in their delight."
01/01/2015 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. VERDICT Any student of Lincoln will find this a compelling read that enhances scholarship on the president.—Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, ID
This book explores various concepts of “body” with respect to Abraham Lincoln. There’s his use of the word, as in “body politic,” a phrase that hadn’t been widely used before; his physical body before and after his death; and the body of myth that emerged following his death. The book is long and at times tedious and redundant, but narrator Pete Larkin keeps the material flowing. His pleasant voice mitigates the sometimes scholarly tone of the writing. His pacing is effective, and he adds just the right notes of drama to the descriptions of the assassination and the mournful aftermath. The author’s most significant contributions to Lincoln scholarship are the portrayals of Lincoln in the African-American press and community, and Larkin reads these sections with the freshness they deserve. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
This book explores various concepts of “body” with respect to Abraham Lincoln. There’s his use of the word, as in “body politic,” a phrase that hadn’t been widely used before; his physical body before and after his death; and the body of myth that emerged following his death. The book is long and at times tedious and redundant, but narrator Pete Larkin keeps the material flowing. His pleasant voice mitigates the sometimes scholarly tone of the writing. His pacing is effective, and he adds just the right notes of drama to the descriptions of the assassination and the mournful aftermath. The author’s most significant contributions to Lincoln scholarship are the portrayals of Lincoln in the African-American press and community, and Larkin reads these sections with the freshness they deserve. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
★ 2014-12-06 An absorbing meditation on Abraham Lincoln's body, in life and death, and its role in shaping America's memory of the man who saved the Union. Taking a fresh approach to the legacy of the martyred president, Fox (History/Univ. of Southern California; Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession, 2004, etc.) examines the ways in which Lincoln's iconic image has captured the American imagination, from recollections of his bruised and rigid corpse in the days immediately after his 1865 assassination to the public memorials, poems, books and movies that have turned his body into a "virtual embodiment of national purpose and glory." Lincoln as president was often deemed homely, even grotesque in appearance; Walt Whitman called his face "so awful ugly it becomes beautiful." Always accessible, the president had "put his body at the center of his public life," endearing himself to the people. Thousands of mourners flocked to his funeral train, which became a moving shrine as it passed through Northern states. Recounting those days in exquisite detail, Fox shows how the "cult of Lincoln" lived on for a century, evinced in poetry ("O Captain! My Captain!"), in bronze and granite statues (some 87 statues by 1952, with one rising in formerly Confederate Richmond, Virginia, in 2003), and in the Lincoln Memorial (1922) in Washington, D.C., which "reimagined Lincoln's unassuming and quirky body as a commanding symbol of the nation." Lincoln's commoner image lived on in the Lincoln penny, in Carl Sandburg's mammoth biography and in films such as John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Only the disillusionment of the Vietnam years could halt outright adulation of the president. More recently, Lincoln has been attacked in fiction by Gore Vidal, celebrated as a liberator by historians, and portrayed in popular culture, from a major Disneyland exhibit to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. An original, brightly written and well-researched cultural history certain to have wide appeal.