Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

Just when you thought the most interesting thing about President Abraham Lincoln was that he wrote his own speeches, this book proves you wrong. Honest Abe was a fan of witty humor and was known to tell an off-color joke.

Aside fro m that revelation in Chapter 3, the remainder of Fred Kaplan’s book, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, focuses on how the love of literature, reading, and writing helped shape the Kentuckian’s Presidential endeavors. Lincoln was also known for his stoic demeanor, and this, too, was shaped by the poetry he read. Kaplan beautifully writes, “His temperament responded to the emotional force of poetry…. Elegiac stoicism became the weight that he carried; it sculpted the stoop of his shoulders, and it darkened the cast of his face.” ―Meghan Blalock