Becoming Abraham Lincoln by Richard Kigel

[ELCore]

The ebook version of Becoming Abraham Lincoln: The Coming of Age of Our Greatest President by Richard Kigel is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This sale might only be for one day.

[Gene C]

An excellent book. The author tell the story of Lincoln from birth to age 25, the age he becomes a state representative.
Richard Kigel in this book uses quotes from several well known biographies of Lincoln and weaves them together to tell the story regarding "The Coming Of Age of Our Greatest President".

Published in 2017, it's not a long book with the text at 228 pages, with another 40 pages of source notes. The vast majority of the notes are quotes from "Henrdon's Informants", and three biography's by William Herndon and Jesse Weik. This has its good and bad points. Herndon did a great job in interviewing and writing to people who knew Lincoln, but a significant part of Kigel's book is dependent on Herndon. In the two chapters (13 pages) regarding Lincoln's romance and grief on the death of Ann Rutledge, 76 of the 78 sources notes are from Herndon's books.

What is nice is Kigel does a good job selecting information from some of the most reliable works on Abraham Lincoln and combining them into an interesting narrative of Lincoln's first 25 years. There are no photographs or illustrations. The chapters are short, it's an interesting, easy to read book.

I recommend this to anyone interested in Lincoln's early life. It's available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Abraham-...367&sr=8-3
I was able to get my copy in very good condition for less than $7 incl. mailing.

[RJNorton]

If I am seeing this correctly, another book by Richard Kigel titled My Childhood's Home: Growing Up With Young Abe Lincoln costs $576.02 on Amazon! (for a new paperback copy)

https://www.amazon.com/My-Childhoods-Hom...0744316421

[Gene C]

Fear not, I found two, not new copies available on Abe Books.

The most expensive one was $59.83
I chose to purchase the other copy, which was much less, less than $20.

It's interesting to see how book prices change over time and between different book sellers. Especially for used books.
If you are patient you can find some reasonable to good deals. We'll see how this one turns out.
- In a few months I may decide to sell it on ebay or Amazon for the low, low price of $498.95

[Gene C]

After a 9 day tour across country, courtesy of the US Postal Service, my book traveled from Glenwood Springs, CO visiting such places as Denver, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, Back to Des Moines, St Louis and finally to Western Kentucky.
A nice soft cover used book in very good condition, I am very pleased since there do not seem to be any copies currently available through Amazon. I look foreword to reading it and reporting back to you.

In the meantime, you might enjoy reading his other book, posted above.

[LincolnMan]

I have also had my book purchases take what seemed to me to be absurd travels vis the postal service. Not sure the reason— but very frustrating.

[Gene C]

(07-05-2021 03:25 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  If I am seeing this correctly, another book by Richard Kigel titled My Childhood's Home: Growing Up With Young Abe Lincoln costs $576.02 on Amazon! (for a new paperback copy)

https://www.amazon.com/My-Childhoods-Hom...0744316421

Good news and bad news.
I purchased a copy of My Childhood Home (copyright 2008) from ABE Books for $17.87 which included tax and shipping.
It appears to be the exact same book as Becoming Abraham Lincoln (copyright 2017) except Becoming AL is hardback, and My Childhood is softbound.
There was nothing in the Becoming book to indicate it was previously issued as My Childhood Home.
At least I didn't spend $576
(According to my class on government spending and accounting that means I saved over $500 to put towards the purchase for more Lincoln books! My wife says no!!!)

[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."