I wasn't sure what to expect with this anthology, but I found myself enthralled from beginning to end. Nnedi Okorafor's "Crossroads", Seth Lindberg's "Atropos", and James Dorr's "Madness" were special delights.

A great mix of chilling, horrifying, and otherwise entertaining stories.

This is a great compilation of magic, madness, culture and creativity. All of the stories were pretty satisfying, some of them terrifying! There are some writers here that are going to go places. Watch for the authors of the two longest pieces, Nnedi Okorafor (her story is called Crossroads) and James S. Dorr (he wrote a story called Madness).

I am particularly interested in American and British drama from the first half of the 20th century. My favorite American playwright is Robert E. Sherwood, my favorite American play is Sherwood's "The Road to Rome," and my second favorite American play is "Abe Lincoln in Illinois."

I lost all sense of time and place while reading "Abe." I forgot I was sitting on a couch in NYC, and thought I was back in Illinois with Honest Abe.

Sherwood is a FOUR-TIME Pulitzer Prize winner, and it makes me sad that this brilliant playwright is so sorely neglected, and that so many people give you a puzzled look when you mention his name.

Read this play, read the aforementioned "Road to Rome" (a love story, a laugh-out-loud comedy, and ALSO a "message play"), and your literary life will be enriched. (Trust me, I've read hundreds of plays, and heck, it ain't a piece of cake to win even ONE Pulitzer!!)

Great playwright (he won four Pulitzers, and one of them was for "Abe Lincoln in Illinois"), riveting play, a MUST-READ; "Abe" is my second-favorite American play, by my #1 favorite American playwright.

Way more attention should be paid to this playwright. I revere his talent.

It is April, 1865, the Civil War has just ended and Abe Lincoln is sitting in the White House waiting for his wife, Mary, to finish dressing. This is a happy night and the Lincoln's are going to Ford's Theater to see a play. As Lincoln patiently waits, he thinks back over his life, his simple upbringing and how he made his way to the presidency...from the small log cabin in Kentucky with only one window, to his love of learning and going to law school, to entering politics and finally becoming president, to believing in one country, whole, not half slave, half free..... Ann Warren Turner's eloquently written "fictional biography" and Wendell Minor's beautifully expressive and detailed artwork combine to capture your youngster's imagination with poignant, quiet emotion and moving, understated text. Historical notes at the end fill in the rest of the story, including Lincoln's assassination and can be used to augment lessons and enhance discussions. Abe Lincoln Remembers is a beautifully written, thoughtful story, perfect for youngsters 5-9 and makes a wonderful addition to all home libraries.

This is a wonderful biography for children, especially for children who are already familiar with Lincoln's story. The illustrations are superb, the best since the Daulaire's Caldecott Medal-winning biography of 1957. Wendell Minor's paintings humanize Lincoln without sacrificing that essentail iconic quality we usually expect in a Lincoln portrait.

"Abe Lincoln: The Young Years" tells the story of the future President from his birth in a cabin at Sinking Springs Farm in Kentucky in 1809 until he was a teenager storyteller in Pigeon Creek, Indiana. Author Keith Brandt covers the most significant episodes in the life of the young Lincoln, using them as evidence for how a "poor backwoods boy grew up loving people, the land, and the law." Each two-spread spread includes an illustration by John Lawn, who takes the trouble to show a lot of things I have heard about Lincoln's life but never seen, such as the half-faced camp the family lived in when that first winter in Indiana and the sleeping loft for Abraham and his sister Sarah to have their own "room." Consequently, this book will teach young readers something about life on the American frontier in the early 1800's as well as all about the life of one of the nation's greatest Presidents. Of course, stopping where it does, "Abe Lincoln: The Young Years" will only want them to read about what happened after this book ends.

...The illustrations opened up discussions about what life was like in the United States in the 1800's. The familiar Lincoln lessons about working hard and succeeding in the face of adversity are well-presented.

Most Americans know the major details of the life of our sixteenth president: his pioneer family and humble upbringing; his self - education, his rise through native wit and intelligence from lawyer to state legislator to presidential candidate; his necessarily rapid growth as a statesman to become the virtual conscience of his nation during the bloodiest rift in it's history and spirit; his vilification in the South; his assassination; and his glorification in the Northern states. What many of us may not know are the particular incidents, decisions, and qualities which created the most extraordinary figure in out political history. In this one - volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin P. Thomas presents all the significant events and achievements in the life of one of the greatest presidents, and greatest men, in American history. These achievements, Thomas maintains, are a matter of record. There is none of the easy myth - making and hero worship that often mar both longer and shorter biographical treatments. In Abraham Lincoln readers will find little of the lyrical and romanticized Lincoln, nor will they encounter the historically possible but imagined situations which sometimes adorn Carl Sandburg's narrative. What they will find is a full account of the rise to power of a skillful politician and complicated man, who took on an enourmous amount of personal and public responsibility during the greatest crisis in our nation's history. Clearly an admirer of our sixteenth president, Thomas allows the story of Lincoln's successes and failures, and his priviate tragedies, to take its natural course to a regrettable and unnatural end. He permits both the character of the man and the weighty, worrisome decisions of the president to speak eloquently for themeselves. In summing up the Lincoln legacy, Thomas achieves an eloquence of his own: Lincoln saw his countrymen as inheritors of a trust. To them it had been given to make democracy succeed, to cleanse it of the hypocrisies that deprive it of its just example in the world. For in democracy, made genuine, he saw our last, best hope of frustrating any tyrant who seeks to regiment or debase or mislead any people, anywhere and of achieving peace on earth and good will among men and woman through the universal liberty of mankind.

AS IN ANY 101 INTRODUCTORY COURSE, HIGHLY RELEVENT OTHER INFORMATION IS MISSING. YET, THIS IS AN EXCELLENT ONE-VOLUME BOOK ABOUT LINCOLN. OTHER BOOKS THAT WOULD FLESH IT OUT DEAL WITH STEPHEN A DOUGLAS, CAPTAIN SAM GRANT (THE FIRST IN A TRILOGY, ALL OF WHICH ARE RELEVENT), (2)GRANT MOVES SOUTH, AND (3)GRANT TAKES COMMAND. IN ADDITION READ OTHER WORKS ABOUT LINCLON WRITTEN BY LUDWIG AND SANDBURG, ALSO THE LINCOLN READER, AND LETTERS AND SPEECHES BY LINCLON, AND THE READER WILL HAVE JUST BEGUN TO APPRECIATE THE GREATNESS OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO BECAME LINCOLN THE MAN, AND A GREAT PRESIDENT. MY 5-STAR RATING IS BASED ON THE 101 HYPOTHESIS IN THE HOPE IT WILL LEAD READERS TO INVESTIGATE FURTHER THE LIFE OF THIS NATION'S SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT THE BETTER TO APPRECIATE WHY LINCOLN IS SO RESPECTED AND HONORED, AS INDEED HE SHOULD BE.

George Sullivan's biography of "Abraham Lincoln" for the "In Their Own Words" series is one of the finest juvenile books on Lincoln I have read, and I have been reading a lot of them this month. Of course, as a rhetorician I would have liked to have seen even more excerpts from Lincoln's speeches: the "House Divided," "Cooper Union," and the 2nd Inaugural Address are basically boiled down to a choice sentence or two. Although "The Gettysburg Address" is presented in its ten sentence entirety. There is no mention of Lincoln's 1st Inaugural.. Still, Sullivan does make ample opportunity to use Lincoln's own words, culled from letters or public conversations, at every opportunity. He also does a nice job talking about the motivations of the younger Lincoln as he struggled to make something of his life.

The details of the Civil War are toned down to a reasonable level, since both the constant parade of generals and the unrelenting slaughter can be a bit overwhelming. If anything is given short shrift in this biography it is Lincoln's love life. Anne Rutledge receives a couple of sentences and there is nothing about his complicated courtship with Mary Todd before their marriage. Nor is there anything about her tragic fate following Lincoln's assassination. However, these seem to me quite reasonable omissions in a book aimed at this particular age group. After all, it is not like they will never find a more comprehensive biography of Lincoln down the road.

I have seen several juvenille biographies of Lincoln that are not half as good and cost three or four times as much as this fine effort. There are a couple dozen illustrations, only a handful of which are not from the 19th-century, which is pretty impressive, given the competition. George Sullivan has written a book that does not water down its subject matter for the younger audience. I find the reliance on Lincoln's own words to be particularly commendable. For upper elementary school students this would be the first volume I would recommend they read about Lincoln.

"More books have been written about Lincoln than any other American," says Sullivan in his biography of our sixteenth President. Not all of them are well done - but this one is excellent and deserves a place on the shelf next to Freedman's Caldecott award-wining Lincoln: A Photobiography (Houghton Mifflin, 1987). Sullivan defines primary and secondary sources, then describes the life and times of Lincoln with a liberal sprinkling of quotes from the President and those who knew him. Excerpts from Lincoln's speeches, letters, and other writings are included, explained, and set into context. The Gettysburg address is reproduced in its brief but effective entirety. The book also gives relates the major events of the Civil War.
The writing is simple and uncluttered, and the oversized text and well-spaced lines make for easy reading. Photos and illustrations add to the narrative without distracting. Chapters are tight and concise, and the design (a mix of contemporary borders with Lincoln's handwriting gracing new chapters) is the perfect blend of old and new.
The book meets the usual 100 page requirement for biographies for middle school reports; teachers who may be turned off by the large print and compact size will appreciate the attention to detail as well as the scholarly chronology, bibliography, further reading, photo credits, and index. Pair this fine example of citing sources, acknowledging other points of view and relaying research from primary sources with Holzer's Abraham Lincoln the Writer (Boyds Mill Press 2000).

William Gienapp's Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America answers a longstanding need for a biography of Lincoln manageable in size, accessible in style, and wise and balanced in content. Lincoln appers on every page of the book and is never lost sight of in the welter of events. He emerges from the text a real believable person, an individual and persuasive assessment of Lincoln's leadership abilities, the finest such appraisal avilable anywhere.

This book is a welcome addition ot the already crowded Lincolnia bookself. The author is the presumed successor to the retired David Herbert Donald at Harvard University. Gienapp has produced a highly readable and concise version of a Lincoln biography that can be completed on a moderately long airplane trip(and it's quite portable unlike most hardcover books). While relatively short,this book is a sufficiently thorough treatment of the Civil War Lincoln. I especially enjoyed the author's analysis of the politician Lincoln who mastered his rivals, both Republican and Democrat. This a good book for either a new Lincoln /Civil War "buff" or a good refresher for a scholar of the times.

This book has details on just about every subject of Abraham Lincoln's life. It is well written and full of interesting photographs. I own several books on Lincoln, and consider this one to be one of the most useful.

This encyclopedia is an wonderful, and essential, reference for all students of Lincoln. Neely has compiled information on a wide variety of subjects related to Abraham Lincoln. Included are major issues such as slavery and temperance, organizations such as the political parties, and people important throughout Lincoln's life and career.

"Abraham Lincoln: President of a Divided Country" by Carol Greene calls itself "A Rookie Biography," and indeed it is an excellent first choice for very young students to read to find out about our 16th President. Greene covers all of the major events in both Lincoln's public and private life, and I was quite impressed with how she goes beyond the basic biographical information to get into some of the issues of the time. This book might be written in simple words but it does attempt to give young readers a sense of some pretty complex issues. This book is full of over 50 illustrations, including photographs from Lincoln's lifetime as well as today, along with etchings, paintings, political broadsides and such, which depict the key events and people in Lincoln's life. For many young readers their lifelong fascination with Abraham Lincoln is going to begin with this wonderful little book. Other Rookie Biographies look at Beethoven, Columbus, Franklin, King, Lee and Pocahontas.

This book was very interesting, and astounding. I never knew so many things about our 16th presisent. You learn what happened to him as a boy, a young man, his, and mary todds romance, his children, and his great reign. Most of the information about him that I know now came from this book. This book may not be thick, but it has a lot of information in it.

I purchased this collection of speeches and letters knowing little about America's most beloved president other than what I had learned in my high school history classes. My first impression was "Boy, where have all the good presidents gone?" Aside from the famous speeches we're all familiar with, Lincoln was a prolific man of letters and an amazing presenter of ideas ahead of their time. Our sixteenth president wasn't perfect, but neither was our nation. During perhaps the most crucial period in U.S. history, thank God there was Abraham Lincoln. I grew up as a Democrat, but if Lincoln were running for the presidency today, he would be the first Republican to get my vote. This Library of America edition of Lincoln's speeches and writings is a beautifully bound volume that I will cherish for years to come.

This is the second volume of the Library of America Project devoted to the works of Abraham Lincoln. It covers the period after the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and includes many of the records of the Lincoln Presidency and the Civil War. The standard Lincoln materials are included, of course, such as the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Inauguaral Addresses. But there is immeasurably more. We see Lincoln writing to his Generals, Cabinet members, and other national leaders in his attempt to hold the Union together. We see a lincolns agonizing over military discipline and frequently pardoning deserting soldiers. We see Lincoln dealing with Indian issues in his day; and we see him supporting the use of black troops in the War effort. This volume is highly useful in uderstanding the Civil War. Equally important it teaches the nature of leadership and fortitude. Finally, Lincoln is one of our Nation's great prose writers and the book deserves reading for that reason alone. The Library of America is to be commended for this volume and for its ongoing series.