The True Mary Lincoln by Betty Ellison

[kerry]

In my opinion, it went too far in defending Mary at times, but I do find the tone understandable. It has some fresh perspectives on certain things that I found refreshing. With a lot of the patronage and corruption stories, other books don't really look hard into the other figures involved and the paperwork they left behind. Some of the intrigues Mary ended up involved in were minor, to-be-expected servant issues and creative accounting. That doesn't make them right, but I thought this book did a better job of explaining what exactly happened, instead of making it seem like Mary stood out as uniquely bad for smaller things everyone was doing. I thought she did a good job summarizing Mary's thought process at times, and did a more thorough investigation of the other parties involved - not to excoriate them, although at times the tone gets harsh, but just to give an honest view of the people struggling with these issues. There were definitely things I had not heard before in other biographies.

ETA: if there are factual inaccuracies, perhaps the new info is the problem...will have to reread.