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Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln Audiobook
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Publisher Description
In Founders' Son, celebrated historian Richard Brookhiser presents a compelling new biography of Abraham Lincoln that highlights his lifelong struggle to carry on the work of the Founding Fathers. Following Lincoln from his humble origins in Kentucky to his assassination in Washington, DC, Brookhiser shows us every side of the man: laborer, lawyer, congressman, president; storyteller, wit, lover of ribald jokes; depressive, poet, friend, visionary. And he shows that despite Lincoln's many roles and his varied life, he returned time and time again to the Founders. They were rhetorical and political touchstones, the basis of his interest in politics, and the lodestars guiding him as he navigated first Illinois politics and then the national scene.
But their legacy was not sufficient. As the Civil War lengthened and the casualties mounted, Lincoln wrestled with one more paternal figure—God the Father—to explain to himself, and to the nation, why ending slavery had come at such a terrible price.
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“Brookhiser’s discussion of the second inaugural is genuinely moving and instructive. The narrative always smoothly returns, though, to the Founders and Lincoln’s unceasing attempt to divine their intentions and to examine the institutions they built and the opportunity they created for someone like him to thrive. For years now, Brookhiser has helped bring the Founders back to life, precisely Lincoln’s purpose as the president contemplated for his country a new birth of freedom, ‘the old freedom’ they envisioned in 1776 but couldn’t quite perfect.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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The narrative always smoothly returns, though, to the Founders and Lincoln's unceasing attempt to divine their intentions and to examine the institutions they built and the opportunity they created for someone like him to thrive.
— Kirkus -
“A concise, smoothly written history of Lincoln’s career and ‘the unfolding of the ideas that animated it,’ especially the ideas Lincoln drew from the men who brought forth the new nation…[A] provocative introduction to the subject of Lincoln and the Founders.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“Beautifully written and choked with insights…For Brookhiser, Lincoln’s life was an encounter with a succession of fathers: his own, the Founding Fathers, and God the father. Can it be only a coincidence that in time he himself was regarded as Father Abraham?”
— Boston Globe -
“[An] unconventional new biography of Lincoln…Brookhiser quotes many of Lincoln’s speeches and letters to demonstrate how he was influenced by the founders in his struggle with the great issues of his time, slavery and civil war.”
— Seattle Times -
“Brookhiser excels in describing Lincoln’s political fights over government banks and in parsing his presidency in wartime—specifically, his detailed account of the complex evolution of the president’s views on slavery.”
— Publishers Weekly
Awards
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A New York Times Editor’s Choice
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About Richard Brookhiser
Richard Brookhiser is the author of What Would the Founders Do?; Founding Father; Alexander Hamilton, American; and America’s First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918. The writer and host of the critically acclaimed PBS documentary Rediscovering George Washington, he is a columnist for Time magazine and a senior editor of National Review. He has also written for the New Yorker and the New York Times. Brookhiser lives in New York City.
About Norman Dietz
Norman Dietz is a writer, voice-over artist, and audiobook narrator. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and was named one of the fifty “Best Voices of the Century” by AudioFile magazine. He and his late wife, Sandra, transformed an abandoned ice-cream parlor into a playhouse, which served “the world’s best hot fudge sundaes” before and after performances. The founder of Theatre in the Works, he lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.