Yes, this has it flaws, but it is still a remarkable read. I am surprised to see what the negative reviews here on Amazon are saying, especially those who seem to be disapointed that is fiction. It is fiction, and has all the chracteristics of literary contemporary fiction (and that of course is where its beauty lies in its lyrical prose, anachronistic settings, and postmodern tone). Anybody who is looking to learn more about Lincoln should pick up any of the hundreds of wonderful biographies about the 16th president. But readers who want a book that explores the complex world of emotional resonance should read "Mr. Lincoln's Wars."

"Mr. Lincoln's Wars" is one of the most moving books I have read to date. It shows Lincoln and the world around him in its most metaphorical sense -- a world haunted by sadness, confusion, and the human will to persevere. The stories revolving around Lincoln are often sadly poignant, showing the president at his most introspective. The book is also complemented by stories that show ordinary people and thier relationships to the "idea" of Lincoln. These stories make for a stark contrast to the world of Lincoln that is presented to us -- showing us the humanity in all people. I suspect that detractors may be missing the point: "Mr. Lincoln's Wars" is not a book for "learning" something new about Abraham Lincoln, instead it is about seeing the humanity of the confusing world that we still live in.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading 'Mr. Lincoln's Wars'. Adam Braver has depicted the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, and those around him, in a refreshing collection of short stories. The author's writing style is engaging and I eagerly look forward to the release of his second book.

My school, George Fox University, recommends ("hint": requires) that all students read this book upon enrollment. This book might have been a valuable contribution to the public's outlook on character in public figures, but is incredibly dry and dull in presentation. These historical figures were real people who deserve a bit...well...a life. This book was written for a great purpose, but will never achieve a lasting impact on many people due to the poor judgment of the author in his choice of style of presentation.

by a discouraged Freshman

In a time when our nation (United States) no longer produces true statesmen with character such as Washington, Mason, Henry, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, I'm saddened that Abraham Lincoln is seen by the editor as a man of character. It would seem, if one is to be a thinking evangelical, that the horrors that Lincoln permitted in the South would un-nerve the most honest of scholars. Here, Os Guines has done a serious disservice to the orthodox Christian community. Abraham Lincoln rejected the Virginia Peace (which included former president John Tyler) accord and Sen. Critendem's compromise for peace. Surely had Lincoln accepted these plans for peace, thousands of lives could have been saved. But most of all, the total war theory Lincoln allowed is the most offensive and repugnate to any thinking Christian. Women and children were implemented in Lincoln's so called war to save the Union. He jailed opponents of his position, threatened the Supreme Court justice Roger Taney with arrest for writing against his war plan. Lincoln usurped the Constitution of the United States by declaring War against seceded states in violation of Article I sec. 8 (this is solely congress's domain). A nation birthed in secession hardly has the right to chastise those who operated from the same principle i.e. the right to govern themselves and self-determination. Os, you should be ashamed of yourself for lack of scholarship in this arena. Particularly over such a sensitive subject as the American War Between the States (Civil War). A man (Lincoln) who waged an offensive war against those who defended their rights and family against an unjust invasion has no place in a book where character matters. Maybe Robert E. Lee or Joshua Chamberlain could have saved you the embarassment. And no, Lincoln's war was not over slavery. Men do not take bullets so 10 % can own slaves. Character counts, so does scholarship.

Did the reviewer who found this "dull" read the same book as I did??? This is a very well-crafted, nicely written, penetrating look at some important topics. I greatly enjoyed it.

Told from the perspective of John Surratt, perhaps, after Booth himself, the least understood of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, Robertson's John Suratt is very much a fictional Surratt, as are all the historical figures presented in the book. While interesting in its depiction of Civil War Washington, ultimately, the book is a disappointment in that the characterizations are flat and stereotypical as Mr. Robertson dispenses with historical truth in search of a good yarn. The Lincoln assassination and its participants can provide enough grist for an enjoyable and plausible historical novel (as Mr. Robertson describes his work) with only marginal manipulation of history; thus the wholesale manipulation of history results in a work that is, at the end, an unconvincing and uncomfortable perversion of the historical fiction genre.

One man involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln was acquitted. Based on contemporary diaries, reminiscences, and court transcripts, biographer David Robertson attempts to tell lowly John Surratt's story in the historical novel Booth, set in 1916 and in the last days of the Civil War.

The action begins as D.W. Griffith is premiering his 1916 movie "Birth of a Nation" in Washington, D.C. where he arranges a meeting with the aged Surratt, who has long kept silent about his role in Lincoln's death. Griffith, a publicity hound, would like to get Surratt on film sharing reminiscences and photographs of the Civil War. For Griffith, Surratt is pure gold: a chance to further claim the spotlight and publicize his film.

But Surratt is torn, having lived most of his adult life anonymously after the tragic events surrounding Lincoln's assassination. Through his diary, we learn exactly how he was drawn into the conspiracy in 1864, and the tale takes some exciting and even grotesque turns before reaching its predictable conclusion in 1916.

Character development is not Robertson's strength and the book is filled with stick figures, including Surratt's own as an ingenuous young man. More importantly, until near the end, Booth himself is pretty much an enigma in the book. Though he is supposed to be charismatic, Robertson hasn't demonstrated that by giving us a rich, living character.

The author's skills as a writer lie elsewhere: He brings to teeming and fascinating life a Washington DC (Washington City in the book) as distant to us in its own way as Ancient Rome. It's a city with a half-finished Washington Monument and a Capitol dome under construction. A city where a traffic jam is caused by troops in transit colliding with cattle being driven to market; where the smell of produce and corpses mingles; where officers (but not their troops) enjoy nudie tableaux vivants in grimy saloons.

Since the beginning of the war, Washington City has been flooded with prostitutes who offer momentary forgetfulness of the horrors of war, and with mediums who offer contact with the dead. "In the midst of so much death, shipped from the battlefields by the Union army in the tens of thousands each year.... and the daily arrival in the city of so many distraught family members and spouses desperate for contact with a loved one, these people made a very good living." There's a dramatic and intriguing scene of a medium being unmasked as a fraud here.

The novel's most gripping sequence is a trip to the nearby battlefront in Virginia to photograph Confederate dead. Most fascinating of all, Robertson brings us in on the contemporary craze for portrait photography that reaches even into the White House. We learn a great deal about the mid-century art and science of working with a camera indoors and in the open air. By taking some clever liberties with the historical record, he makes photography central to his story. Booth is unexpectedly full of evocative details and insights into what the craze meant and how it changed Americans. Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery (www.levraphael.com)

Most (though clearly not all, judging from previous comments here) Civil War and Lincoln buffs will applaud David Robertson's debut novel, which rescues a friend of John Wilkes Booth from obscurity and places him at center stage. Robertson brings to life John H. Surratt, tried as a co-conspirator and acquitted -- two years after his mother was convicted on the same charge and became the first woman to be hanged by the U.S. government. But "Booth" is a book for even readers with no special interest in the Civil War. It opens a fascinating window onto those turbulent times and offers insights -- though, granted, fictional ones -- into a story whose ending everyone already knows.

The novel opens with Surratt's 1916 New York Times obituary and then shows us diary entries he had written a few days before. In his initial entry, Surratt reveals that he has been plucked from shipping-clerk obscurity by none other than D.W. Griffith, who wants to put the reminiscences of the long-forgotten historical figure on film for an epilogue to his new movie, "The Birth of a Nation." He considers Griffith's proposal: "Perhaps," he writes, "it was time to tell the full truth about the Lincoln assassination." And with that, the septuagenarian opens up his diaries from the fateful months of 1864-65, offering up the observations and narrations of his younger self.

At 21, already a failed playwright, Surratt has just landed a job as a photographer's assistant that both affords him gainful employment and helps him avoid the draft. It was a strong recommendation by his friend Booth (one of the country's most popular actors) that got him the position, and, as he finds out, the favor comes with strings attached. According to Robertson's somewhat defensive five-page essay on his sources, Surratt wasn't actually a photographer, but the author's invention is welcome -- it enlivens both the novel and Surratt's character and allows for some remarkable bits about the Civil War photographer's art: the metal rack that painfully hol! ds subjects' heads and bodies still; the delicate glass-and-chemical work to produce photographic plates; and "the bane of the photographers' art" -- the light-absorbing fabric called bombazine. Surratt's boss complains that "with the fashion in ladies' dress, a pretty maiden of twenty who comes to my studio in her best bombazine outfit becomes . . . a fleshy blob of a face swimming in an inky darkness."

The truly fascinating element of the novel, though, is the relationship between Booth and Surratt, who is torn between obligation and independence, struggling for control over "Booth's presence in my life." Robertson's Surratt is a reluctant cipher, a humorless man searching for a cause; it's all too easy to fall under Booth's sway. He's aware of this influence, disturbed by it, fights it. He frets about his place in Booth's shadow even as his friend worries that "he is not the great man onstage" that his father, Junius Booth, was. At times Surratt reflects upon "how lucky I was to be able to call a man like John Wilkes Booth my friend." But he's fully aware that Booth is a "subtle manipulator and egotist"; even as he marvels at his friend's generosity, "I couldn't help wondering what Booth wanted."

It turns out that what Booth wants is help with a wild scheme: He intends to kidnap President Lincoln as a prisoner of war, to stop all the killing; his primary concern is that the Union army is bent on humiliating the South. His safety compromised, Surratt turns against his friend: "Booth has reduced my life to comical farce, and a low bumbling comedy. . . . I fear he is a loose cannon, and sure to get me killed -- and over something about which I am utterly disagreed with him on. Why did I ever think Booth was my friend? How can I now disassociate myself from him?" He tries to disentangle himself, deciding that "with the return of peace I will back away from Booth, and turn once again to my own hopes, my own future." But, of course, eventually it's too late, and Booth commits "the one act that would write! my name forever in the history books, and, I prayed, make the South whole again."

This last bit is from Booth's diary, written during his flight after Lincoln's murder. Booth's entries are by turns contemplative and thrilling -- and, considering the harried circumstances of their writing, a little too glossy to seem genuine. Indeed, both diaries read more like meticulously edited historical fiction than contemporary journals. They're far too nuanced and accomplished, laced with italicized flashback phrases and artful foreshadowing. The entries conclude with teasing cliffhangers. There are no missteps, no unsurety, no spontaneity. They don't *sound* right. Surratt's recollection of even throwaway dialogue is too pitch-perfect to be real, as when Booth tells a colleague: "Lewis, there is also a sideboard at the bar with pickled eggs, oysters, and beefsteaks for sandwiches. . . . You must get yourself something to eat. It's all right." Not even Truman Capote would have remembered these lines! Many readers have trouble when an author gives us an unreliable narrator, but sometimes a narrator can be *too* reliable.

The upside to the writing's shininess is that "Booth" is very smooth reading -- though I can't resist pointing out a rare stumble, when Surratt describes his dread: "I felt a cold shiver in my bowels, as if the shadow of death had sent a chill wind through them." Somehow I doubt Robertson was aiming to instill an image of wind in Surratt's bowels. But this type of lapse is unusual. "Booth" is a gripping, enlightening read that's well worth the time of even those who don't often pick up historical fiction. And for Civil War aficionados: Don't miss this one.

An eighth of august is the story of a just everyday family in the 60's going through problems. The story is told through different members of the family. The story is centered around El, the young nephrew, death a year before. The family is again getting ready to attend the county festive where the tradgedy struck the year before. The story setting is before and after the death took place. I like reading books with the time frame of the 60's I throught the book was good, but kinda of confusing with the years.

Dawn Turner Trice is an excellent author. This is the first book that I read of hers. She has so many lessons in this story..so many old sayings that make you feel like the characters are a part of your family. I hope the lessons will linger on within me for years to come. If this festival that they speak of was near here, I would surely attend. This book makes true that in every family some rain, and some pain must fall as the author says, " Sometimes grief opens up a window. Sometimes grief open it wide enough for something wonderful to fly in". I'm glad Trice's messages flew into my space.

[...]

By a quarter of the way into the book I was absolutely hooked and wanted to keep reading it as quickly as possible. It's a terrifically engaging book and I felt very rewarded for staying with it early on when it was a bit confusing.

What I liked most about the book was how the story was told, ie., by several characters and not always chronoligically. This style unfolded the characters in very interesting ways. Just about every one of them grew in depth as the story worked toward a conclusion. I made judgments about people which weren't always accurate at the beginning and they grew before my eyes as the story moved on. Each character had much more depth than was revealed in the first half of the book and it reflects real life as we get to know people and they hold so much more depth than when we first meet them.

Further, I enjoyed her style of writing "in dialect". I had the feeling of evesdropping in on conversations in a household I wouldn't ordinarily have access to (I'm white). If these people were talking to me in real life they'd probably speak more "proper". This aspect endeared them to me. I also happen to live in an African American neighborhood so I do get an opportunity a times to hear and appreciate the more natural style of speaking that goes on in the 'hood so her style seemed very realistic and "down home" to me.

I highly recommend.

In a lot of ways this book is really Henry Lincoln responding to the BBC2 television programme "History of a Mystery" which did much to disprove not only his own book ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail") but the derivative work "Tomb of God." This is also Lincoln's way to distance himself (only slightly, however) from the Priory of Sion story (which has very much been proven to be a hoax) and stick more with the geometry aspects of the story (which were really investigated first by David Wood in 1985).

This book is basically just Henry Lincoln setting down the events of his creation of the BBC "Chronicle" programs in the 1970s that opened up the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau to the European community. He wants to show the path he took to allow people to see that he was not "duped" as he has often been accused of and that the path he followed was logical. To a certain extent, it probably was logical. However, what Lincoln fails to acknowledge in this book (and all his other books) is that Jean Luc-Chaumeil, who does get mention in "Sacred Pattern," basically "ratted out" Pierre Plantard and the alleged Priory of Sion. Chaumeil's work has shown that the Priory was nothing more than a hoax that was started up by Pierre Plantard, who really was in a group of the same name that was started in 1956 by Andre Bonhomme. Thus, Lincoln was "duped." As was Gerard de Sede before him. He fell for the hoax, realized it, and then tried to latch on to another element of the "mystery" that seemed to have more promise and did not involve a "secret society." Lincoln also never mentions the massive contributions to the "mystery" by Jacques Riviere, Pierre Jarnac, and Rene Descadeillas. (He does briefly mention Descadeillas but then dismisses him without any explanation.) He also does not mention that he was presented with evidence from Jean Luc-Chaumeil before the publication of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that showed the Priory of Sion was a hoax and that he ignored. Lincoln, in his more recent research, has only concentrated on the alleged geometric aspects of the so-called mystery and he has given up trying to promote the Priory of Sion. That is basically what this book is about: setting up his new element of mystery, the alleged odd geometry. (He also did this because his 1991 "The Holy Place" is largely out of print and thus many of his fans were not aware of the extent of his work in this regard.

All in all, this is a relatively okay book if you want to try to get a very chronological fashion of how certain events happened during the course of the research, which is important to determine the veracity of an independent researcher like Lincoln. However, there is absolutely nothing new in this book that you could not read in "The Holy Place" or in the books that were co-authored with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. I would definitely not recommend this book unless you feel you just have to read everything on the story or you feel you need a "blow-by-blow" account, as it were, of Lincoln's research pattern.

I thought the book was "oversold" in a way. From reading the jacket it looked like the "answer" to the Berenger Sauniere mystery, to what on earth it was that turned this impoverished rural cure into a wealthy identity. Now, yes, I know we have the sacred geometry, but it's unfinished? Where's the follow-up on the trough near the grove of trees? Where's the follow-up on just what may have actually happened at the focal point of that pentagram? We don't see it. While the anecdotes are interesting, and tragi-comic in some cases, they almost appear out of place? In some parts I felt like I was reading "The Making of Holy Blood, Holy Grail"" (which I loved by the way).

After reading Andrews and Schellenberger's "The Tomb of God", Lincoln's books seems a little uncomplete. The author's merit is, without any doubt, to have risen the big question about Rennes le Château, with a series of documentaries and books.
After "The Holy Place", Lincoln embarks on a new adventure, recalling other interesting particulars which take the target out of Rennes le Château, leading the reader to North Europe and to Fibonacci and the Templars.
A little too much critic towards Andrews and Schellenberger (who, on their side, have the merit to provide useful information and to suggest further readings), in the first part Lincoln sounds a little too jealous of his own theories and unwilling to listen to other people's point of view. A little too fiction, so to speak. The only reference to "The Tomb of God" (which is not mentioned in the bibliography, indeed very small and not helpful)is really arrogant.
At any rate, the second part of this book is absolutely a must, something able to drag you attention to other interesting, fascinating aspect of human history.
recommended to those who think Rennes le Château is only one ring of the chain.

. . .from an author (Balsiger) whose own "unbiasedness" has been repeatedly called into question -- not only by skeptics, but by fellow Christians as well.

Don't bother.

Frankly I have never understood why there is such a big question about why John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln. Isn't it obvious? Abraham Lincoln violated eleven constitutional rights and civil liberties over the course of the Civil War, including but not limited to having his troops burn southern crops, forcing families into starvation and attacking citizens on southern streets. If we are so eager to execute people like John Walker Lindh, why not the president of the United States for a much more serious crime than that one Lindh committed? This book is, for the most part, hogwash. The writers present no decent evidence that Booth was part of a larger Confederate/Union conspiracy. As for this David E. George nonsense, the fact that a birth certificate was found among George's posessions in Enid saying that he was born in 1844 should be enough to discount this little theory. The simple fact of the matter is that John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln for crimes against the Constitution, he made good his escape, and was eventually shot by federal troops outside of Bowling Green, Virginia two weeks later. Books such as these portray Booth as a weak-minded, misguided youth. There is no great mystery here.

Some people find a lot of faults with the theories contained in this book. I agree with ever word! Lincoln was basiclly murdered for the same reason Kennedy was- too many greedy politicians and businessman were making money off of two wars 100 years apart,and they didn't want the money flow to end, and when these greedy [people] saw that these two great presidents were going to end these idiotic bloodbaths, they arranged to have them killed; purely and simply! This book, once you read it 2 or 3 times, will horrify you because you will see what a truly great man Lincoln was, and what wonderful things he could have done for this country, very possibly with a third term in the white house;. But as hard as it is to find, try anyway-it's well worth it; it's fascinating reading!

This book is great if you want to know everything there is to know about the gilded age, but it is really boring! It reads just like a texbook, so if that's what you're looking for, go for it! I certainly woudn't reccomend it for any light reading.

I guess anybody who enjoys reading about American history, and the way life was back in the day, they'd appreciate this book. All it is, is a compilation of facts, where the author tries to keep out his own opinion, thus preventing biased judgements made on the readers' part. Since I was required to read this book for my AP American history course, I was would not go strolling down a library isle and pick this book off of the shelf... I do not recommend wasting your time and/or money on this pathetic attempt at writing.

I happen to know S. Dennis Cashman personally, so forgive me if I sound biased...to the respondent who said the book represented a 'pathetic attempt at writing'...Mr. Cashman is one of the most brilliant men I have ever known, and one of the finest writers. His thoroughness and understanding of a necessarily dry subject should be applauded for its completeness and accuracy. An essential tool for any student of American history.

Rockwell may have been the only hope to how our world became today.
America no longer the same country it was say 30 years ago.
mass non-white immigration from third world nations flooding America has taken away the spiritual beauty of this once proud land.Rockwell was our only hope.if he live today.the Nazi Party
may have gotton a good start.Rockwell was indeed the Greatest man who walked this nation!

This is a small book with 145 pages of text, 50+ pages of endnotes, and a weak index. Rather than tell the story of Rockwell, his lieutenants, and movement, Simonelli does a hatchet job continually referring to Rockwell as a hate monger. The author apparently thinks this needless repetition is necessary to get his points across.

Simonelli does bring further to light Solomon Fineberg's successful operation with his fellow Jews power to keep Rockwell from getting media attention, but he discusses it as if it occurred only between Jewish organizations. The real campaign was to orchestrated Jewish controlled news media. The book fails to mention the FBI's parallel program, COINTELPRO, which was both illegal and damaging to Rockwell.

The other book, William Schmaltz's , "George Lincoln Rockwell & the American Nazi Party," is a better and much more interesting book. It gives details of many of Rockwell's life, operations, confrontations with police, and much more detail on his lieutenants. "White Power," Rockwell's own book, which is still available, is well worth reading.

One has to suspect that Simonelli's book was a Ph.D. dissertation. It can serve as a reference for future biographers but generally is biased, a slow read, and unscholarly yet overly academic.

Simonelli's book has two main virtues. First, he had a great deal of access to Rockwell's correpondence and papers and quotes from it liberally. Second, he had a great deal of access to the files of Jewish organizations and individuals who opposed Rockwell.

In spite of this wealth of primary sources, however, the book is disappointing and prefunctory. It seems that after all his archival sleuthing, Simonelli lost interest in his subject matter when he actually sat down to write the book. This leads to a distorted picture of Rockell's ideas and personality. A much fuller picture is found in the Schmaltz biography HATE.

One case in point: Simonelli's discussion of the case against John Patler, Rockwell's convicted killer, leaves out crucial pieces of evidence, giving the impression that the case against Patler was weaker than it actually was. Then Simonelli goes on to air the conspiracy theories blaming Matt Koehl, William Pierce, and others for the murder. These may seem plausible to the reader only because the case against Patler is stated weakly. This is VERY MISLEADING and quite simply unjust.

Simonelli actually does a better job of documenting how Jewish organizations first tried to terrorize and intimidate Rockwell, and then, failing that, resorted to a very successful press blackout to deny him publicity and prevent his ideas from being heard and debated. Simonelli demonstrates just how powerful the Jewish control over the media is, and how Americans are fed a version of reality that is distorted to protect and advance Jewish interests. This is a frightening thought, because if they did it then, they can do it now too.

The bottom line: I recommend this book as a supplement to Schmaltz's HATE, but not as a substitute. If you read one book on Rockwell, read HATE.

This is an abyssally written, horribly researched, inaccurate, unorganized babble of idle gossip about some truly great artists and writers. The author should not attempt to write about things beyond his limited ken. What a travesty that a publisher would agree to print such garbage!

I picked up this book because I like the work of George Platt Lynes and Paul Cadmus a lot. I also read and liked very much Mr. Leddick's first novel and own a couple of his books on male nude photography. (I have little interest in Lincoln Kirstein or ballet either.) I finished this book not having learned much about either of these two men that I cared to remember. Part of the problem is that Mr. Leddick attempts too much. He is art critic, photography critic, dance critic, literary critic as well as consummate gossip. Additionally since there are no footnotes in this book, the reader has no idea whether Leddick's conclusions about anything are his or something he gleaned from the list of sources at the back of the book. Take the opening sentence from Leddick's chapter on Katherine Anne Porter: "Katherine Anne Porter is among the most esteemed women writers of the twentieth century in America." Is that Mr. Leddick's opinion-- and what qualifies him to make such a judgment-- or the literary critics who tell us whom we should read? Incidentally, Ms. Porter comes off as a most distasteful person. Mr. Leddick paints her as homophobic although she obviously hung out with a lot of people whose lives she couldn't tolerate. He might have discussed her racism as well if he wanted to really give us a rounded view of this pretty ugly woman.

I would have preferred more insight into what made Mr. Lynes one of America's great photographers and less information and speculation as to whom he did bed or might have taken to bed. Mr. Leddick does discuss at some length many of Cadmus' paintings. Without the actual reproductions preferably in color, however, it is impossible to know whether or not this writer has a clue as to what he is discussing.

Mr. Leddick does briefly discuss Lynes' influence on later photographers, particularly Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. For my money, Lynes is the best photographer of the male nude this country has had. His studio lighting is creative and quite wonderful. Just look at the photographs of anyone who followed him to see the long shadow he cast. (And all this inventive and difficult lighting before the strobe. At least there were no monotonous umbrella reflections in the eyes of Lynes' models.) Robert Mapplethorpe--whose work I admire a lot-- but who lit every photograph he ever took pretty much the same way-- could certainly have learned a plenty from studying Lynes' lighting.

So if you want to appreciate these two men-- study their works and made your own judgments. Mr. Leddick has edited a fine book on Mr. Lynes' photographs and there are several fine books on Cadmus in color.

David Leddick has accomplished in this book what couldn't have been achieved by any impeccably-trained art critic or scholarly biographer: he has told the story of three vastly different but intertwined lives from the standpoint of a cultural historian who knew his subjects very well. I for one don't regret, as other reviewers have, that Leddick didn't write about the various other "menages a trois" that crop up in the world of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, and Lincoln Kirstein. (I don't believe that the French-Cadmus or the Wheeler-Wescott-Lynes trios, for example, is particularly interesting beyond the sexually titillating.) On the other hand, the Lynes-Cadmus-Kirstein connection, to my knowledge, has not been explored in any depth at all, and Lynes especially is in need of an historical re-evaluation. Leddick does an admirable job of showing the kind of world these three men inhabited when they were at ease sexually and emotionally. Like another reviewer, I found the first-person introductions to the book's chapter divisions first-rate writing and terrific gay-history. And Leddick's evocation of Lynes, the flamboyant cement who seems to have held many of these friendships together, is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. I enjoyed this book immensely.

"Moonlight" by John Walsh is an embarassment to honest Lincoln scholarship. It is a book with enormous potential to illustrate one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous legal cases, but instead it weaves a narrative feculent with specious logic; the factual assertions of unknown, unknowable and unproveable theories; and assumption after assumption after assumption. Walsh proves some important points, and makes good use of some primary and secondary sources. He offers a detailed account of the murder, the trial and the outcome that cannot be found elsewhere. However, the positive attributes of the book become overshadowed by Walsh's outrageous assertions of supposition as fact, his assertions without qualification or citation, and his complete reliance, as unassailable proof and fact, on the second-hand interview of a trial juror 50 years after the trial. More than once Walsh makes unknowable and unproveable assertions, then admits he can't prove them, then dismisses this serious circumstance as unimportant. For example: "That the charge was levelled during Lincoln's senatorial campaign of 1858 is stated in many sources but I have not been able to document it." (p 155) "Moonlight" is a lost opportunity. The frighteningly childish writing quality, the fanciful indulgences, suppositions, specious logic, appearance of questionable sources and Walsh's own obvious insularity in his investigative objective, make this book a sham, and an insult to the field of historical research.

This is nearly a very good book. Walsh has done credible research and his bibliography is helpful. He clarifys the issues in the almanac trial and provides a picture of Lincoln at work as a defense attorney as few have. BUT.. In his introduction Walsh says, "no fictional coloring has been added" and eveything "rests squarely on documented sources." If only that were so. The tone of the book is like an over-ripe romance novel. I counted two !s and five usues of italics for emphasis in the introduction alone. He virtually admits he can not prove any of his more florid conclusions. A defense attorney is not on a quest for the truth. He or she need only make the prosecution's case look uncertain, which is what Lincoln did. Walsh states that Lincoln could not help the man convicted of killing Metzer, "without endangering Duff [Lincoln's client.]"
Duff had already been aquitted. He could not have been tried for the same crime twice. It is a shame that with all the good work he did Walsh did not present the case in a factual matter. he could have raised very interesting ethical questions about the role of a defense attorney with a very probably guilty client. He did not.

I think this book is an interesting evocation of the ethical scruples of Lincoln as lawyer. Contrary to the conclusion drawn by the author, the sources he relies upon demonstrate that Lincoln was ethical in the zealous representation of his client, an accused murderer. Even under today's legal standards, Lincoln would have been correct to instruct a witness that he was only interested in the witness's ability to testify on a single factual aspect of the trial and to instruct the witness to tell him nothing else except the truth about that single fact. During his preparation for trial, when the witness tried to stray from his instructions and inform Lincoln of other observations, Lincoln would have been within his right to interrupt and remind him that he mustn't offer additional observations beyond the fact requested.

Even today we instruct juries that they may believe all, part, or none of a witness's testimony. Lawyers are held to no different standards in their use of witnesses at trial except lawyers may not offer a witness whose testimony the lawyer believes would commit a fraud upon the court. Lincoln never placed this witness on the stand to elicit any testimony other than what the witness stated to be the truth. Thus the claim that Lincoln "suborned perjury" is naive and insulting. For all that, I enjoyed the underlying research, and the author's exposition of it. It does strike me that consultation with an attorney would have vastly improved the history and dampened the sensationalism.