Abe’s 200th

February 12 will be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, whose life is surely the most chronicled of any American. Yet the flurry of new books about Lincoln call to mind the words of abolitionist James Sloan Gibbons: “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.” While the number of new titles is closer to 60 than 300,000, the anticipation caused is not unmixed with some trepidation. Nearly four score years ago, Professor James G. Randall wondered whether the Lincoln theme had been “exhausted,” and while the many outstanding works since published have answered that query in the negative, only time will tell whether the bicentennial publishing boom will increase the public’s enlightenment and publishers’ bottom lines.

Bennett Cerf observed that the most commercially promising book title was Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, but only twice in recent years have Lincoln books transcended the usual audience for historical works to become major bestsellers. Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, was published by Simon & Schuster to great acclaim and outstanding sales in 2005. A vivid portrait of Lincoln and his brilliant, fractious cabinet, Rivals is written in a grand, narrative style, by the first popular historian to tackle the subject in many years. It is the basis of a long delayed and much anticipated film by Steven Spielberg, with Liam Neeson in the title role. This work on the 16th president received a further boost when Barack Obama cited it as a blueprint for his administration.

Two years ago saw the breakout success of Edgar Award—winning Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson, a nonfiction thriller about Lincoln’s murder and the hunt for his assassin. Mystery and suspense fans joined history buffs to make Manhunt a commercial success; HBO is making it into a miniseries. Swanson’s adaptation of Manhunt for younger readers, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer (Scholastic), is a bicentennial title that just received a starred review in PW.

A legion of scholarly and popular authors have taken up their pens to examine every possible aspect of the president’s life, from his military leadership to his literary genius, and two major new biographies present the great man’s life in its entirety. Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Johns Hopkins Univ.) was rapturously reviewed in these pages; at two volumes and 2,000 pages, it is a stunning feat of research. More compact but still substantial is A. Lincoln (Random House) by Ronald C. White, which aims to supersede David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln, the last bestselling full biography. White brings a pleasing style to the task, but it remains to be seen whether Goodwin’s bestseller has left the wider reading public sated or hungry for more big books on Lincoln.

The most successful book of the new Lincoln books to date is Tried by War (Penguin by James M. McPherson (BookScan tracks 58,000 copies sold) McPherson’s study of the greatest American president’s military acumen is fortunately timed; as a nation at war transitions from one commander-in-chief to another. McPherson’s book is the first and only bicentennial bestseller thus far (other than Team of Rivals, whose praise by President Obama has helped return it to the lists). Another brilliant study of the martial Lincoln is Lincoln and His Admirals (Oxford Univ.), by Craig L. Symonds, the definitive work on the 16th president’s leadership of the navy.

In his seminal essay on Lincoln, Edmund Wilson wrote: “alone among American Presidents, it is possible to imagine Lincoln, grown up in a different milieu, becoming a distinguished writer of a not merely political kind.” It is fitting and proper, then, that the literary feast occasioned by the bicentennial should include at least one exploration of Lincoln’s literary genius. Lincoln: A Biography of a Writer (Harper) by Fred Kaplan was published to strong reviews; President-elect Obama, perhaps seeking inspiration for his inaugural address, was spotted with Kaplan’s book under his arm in late November.

Obama’s tenure as president-elect lasted less than three months, but in an era of March inaugurations, Lincoln’s lasted four, a period minutely chronicled in Lincoln: President-Elect (Simon & Schuster) by Harold Holzer. Holzer, a ubiquitous presence in the Lincoln industry, has also edited The Lincoln Anthology (Library of America) and In Lincoln’s Hand (Bantam).

Coffee tables will not go unadorned this bicentennial season: Looking for Lincoln: the Making of an American Icon (Knopf), by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardtand Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., is an informative look at how Americans shaped and contested Lincoln’s public image between his assassination and the dedication of his marble shrine on the Potomac. The Kunhardts wisely eschew familiar biographical detail and concentrate instead on Lincoln’s transition from politician to icon.

Alexander Stephens, the former Confederate vice president, declared that Lincoln’s attachment to the Union “rose to the sublimity of a religious mysticism.” This was unfair to Lincoln, whose devotion to the American experiment was based on logic and wisdom, but there seems something mystical about publishers’ faith in the subject of the Civil War president. Although Lincoln’s name in the title no longer guarantees commercial success, if it ever did, with luck perhaps two or three modest bestsellers will emerge during this historic bicentennial season. Enough, on top of those that have come before, to make all the more ironic Lincoln’s youthful lament that he had “done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.”