What are you reading now?

[Liz Rosenthal]

I just finished The Lincolns by Daniel Mark Epstein. While the writing is beautiful - scenic and sensitive - and the author somehow makes even a description about Mary's various outfits interesting, it's a very depressing book. So unless you have a high threshold for sadness, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

I've just started Lucius Chittenden's Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration. It was published in 1891! (Chittenden was an official in the Department of the Treasury during the Lincoln Administration.) I wasn't sure if it would be worth reading, since some of the reminiscence volumes from that era tend to be very dry, a prime example being Lincoln and Men of War Times by Alexander McClure, who wrote in maddening generalities and called everybody under the sun "sagacious."

But it appears that Chittenden was an engaging writer, and funny, too. Here is a little bit of his style, in which he writes of being recruited as a Republican campaigner in Pennsylvania (though he was a Vermont resident): "Resistance appeared to be unavailing. I surrendered, telegraphed home some of the details of my capture, and that I did not anticipate an early escape out of the hands into which I had fallen.... [Then he was recruited to campaign in NJ.] I pleaded exhaustion, loss of voice, general dilapidation and worthlessness, in vain...."

I'm expecting more of this same cleverness in the remainder of the book!