Becoming Abraham Lincoln by Richard Kigel

[RJNorton]

David J. Kent reviewed Kigel's book for the Spring 2019 edition of The Lincolnian. Kent wrote:

"The author did a tremendous amount of work to pull pertinent passages from Herndon's Informants and other resources. The book ostensibly follows a chronological narrative, although this is rather choppy in places. That criticism aside, the book provides a useful summary of Lincoln's early life as seen through the eyes of the people who knew him.

Some quick background: Herndon's Informants is a compendium by Lincoln experts Wilson and Rodney Davis. It collects all the interviews and correspondence obtained by Lincoln's long-time law partner, William Herndon, immediately after the assassination. Herndon communicated in person and by letter with dozens of people who knew Lincoln during his early life in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. He used the information in the biography of Lincoln written with Jesse Weik, commonly referred to as Herndon’s Lincoln. Wilson and Davis pulled all of these together and provided substantial annotation to correct errors, give background, provide additional analysis, and create a hugely beneficial index.

Author Richard Kigel clearly spent a lot of time searching keywords in the index of Herndon's Informants. He pulls out relevant quotes and impressions on Lincoln throughout his upbringing. Each of the 32 chapters is short, packed with quotes (mostly well footnoted), and represents a vignette of some incident or period in Lincoln's life from birth, through his formative years, and into his early adult life in New Salem. He uses this reporting from people who knew Lincoln to give insight into Lincoln's development, character, and thoughts. Kigel adds his own insights, as well as enough background and transitioning material to make every chapter into its own story. As we progress through the chapters, we progress through Lincoln's life.

Some chapters carry the story concept better than others. Because the book is broken into 32 more or less independent sections, the overall story of Lincoln's life may not be fully coherent for readers who don’t already know it. In fact, as much as I read about Lincoln, this book felt like it dragged on rather than carried me through. [In all fairness, I was taking a lot of notes as I went along]

In my opening I alluded to the tremendous amount of work Kigel did going through Herndon's correspondence with Lincoln friends and family. This may be the book's greatest value. While Herndon’s Informants is a must-have research source, its format makes it unreadable as a story of Lincoln’s life. Kigel has gone a step further to extract comments, insights, and anecdotes on many facets of Lincoln's life and organized them into chapters. Overall, even with its intermittent flow, the book more or less works reasonably well as a general chronology of Lincoln's life and as a first step for Lincoln researchers looking for additional primary resource material.

There have been a spate of books on Lincoln's early life recently and some of them may (or may not) provide a better narrative, but I think none can match the level of effort Kigel has put into this volume."