What are you reading now?

[Liz Rosenthal]

(03-17-2013 08:56 AM)Craig Hipkins Wrote:  I just started reading William Lee Miller's book Lincoln's Virtues. Has anyone ever read Miller before?

Craig

Craig:

My husband and I both read it, as well as President Lincoln: Duty of a Statesman, William Lee Miller's follow-up. Lincoln's Virtues is not only elegantly written, but makes the most succinct and best case of anything I've read before or since regarding the extraordinary nature of Abraham Lincoln's character and ethics.

I actually reached out to William Lee Miller a couple of years ago to let him know how much hubby and I enjoyed his books. He was very appreciative and perhaps a little surprised, as he probably hadn't gotten much fan mail compared to the more famous modern-day Lincoln biographers.

We were saddened to learn of Mr. Miller's passing over the summer. But at least he was able to contribute very worthy books for students of Lincoln to enjoy.

Another book of his that I highly recommend is Arguing About Slavery, which recounts the battle of Representative (and former President) John Quincy Adams and his 1830s allies in the House of Representatives to defeat the "gag rule" forbidding any discussion of slavery in the House. This gag rule was so bad that the streams of anti-slavery petitions sent to the House for their consideration not only could not be discussed or acknowledged, they couldn't even be tabled! If they'd been tabled, the record would have shown that Congress had received a petition about slavery, which was a big no-no. So these petitions sort of existed in a kind of existential limbo - sent to Congress and arriving at Congress's door, but not received, noted or tabled.

Right now I'm reading Diplomat in Carpet Slippers by Jay Monaghan (published in 1945), which focuses on Lincoln's foreign policy. Monaghan's writing style flowed well and combined humor with fairly sharp insight. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through the book, though. What do others think of this book?