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Title: Lincoln: A Novel by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0375708766 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53
Rating: 4
Summary: Lincoln a worthwhile read
Comment: I heard Gore Vidal give a talk / interview on NPR one Saturday afternoon when I was driving around Berkeley... I stopped and parked to listen. Thoughtful, witty, knowledgeable man. He said his historical fiction is based closely on truth and that it's an attempt to bring the real history of the nation to the reader... at a level which isn't at all touched upon in history class. I think that he came through with his promise. _Lincoln_ shows the complex politics at play. Overall, this book is definitely recommended.
What it misses, I think, is a fair sense of the abolitionist movement. Yes, Lincoln was cagey, and probably did care more about keeping the Union together than he did about freeing the slaves. But there are characters who are staunch abolitionists, but instead of letting the reader get a feel for the passion in the movement, the movement is given no eloquent voice. Indeed, Sect. of Treasury Chase is supposedly a staunch abolitionist, but we never see any side of this... we are only told. The side we see is a power-grubbing fool. Surely there was more than that, surely Vidal could do a little bit better to bring us the flavor of the times, to learn who was doing the acting. I feel like he did this for events within the whitehouse, but why couldn't there be just a little more depth about the war and about abolition?
Rating: 4
Summary: A great read, albeit not a little messy...
Comment: If you enjoy historical fiction of the pageturner variety this is great fun. Oddly, for all of Vidal's attention to Seward and Booth and Lincoln himself it is Mary Todd Lincoln whom most people most vividly remember after reading this novel, and who comes most startlingly to life (in part because she is the most strikingly strange of these charcters--and that is saying something). It would be hard to call this "literature," properly, in that Vidal rambles a good deal and does not tie up or "rhyme" all the loose ends of the narrative together neatly; still, it's a great read for a long vacation.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Comment: Mr. Vidal's book, I found, was a perfect mallet with which to destroy the myth that surrounds the person of Abraham Lincoln. Not being an American, I have always been subjected to a surreal view of American history, that seemed more legend than fact. 'Lincoln' drew a humanistic picture of that president. A picture that showed a man dedictated to the country that was and would be again after a turbulent civil war. I liked the way that Mr. Vidal portrayed President Lincoln, not as the 'great emancipast' that he was to later be dubbed, but as a politician who freed the slaves solely to hurt the enemies of the Union and who wanted to push those freed slaves out of the United States, instead of letting them remain as free people. Definitely a good read.
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Title: Burr: A Novel (The American Chronicle Series) by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0375708731 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: 1876 by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0375708723 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Empire: A Novel (Vidal, Gore, American Chronicle.) by Gore Vidal ISBN: 037570874X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Washington, D.C: A Novel (The American Chronicle Series) by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0375708774 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920s (Vidal, Gore, American Chronicle.) by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0375708758 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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