Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President - Hardcover

Guelzo, Allen C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802838723 ISBN 13: 9780802838728

Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co, 1999

Synopsis

A unique "intellectual biography" of America's most celebrated president.

Despite tremendous interest in Abraham Lincoln and his place in one of America's most tumultuous historical periods, little has been written about his religious life. This truly fresh look at the nation's sixteenth president relates the outward events of Lincoln's life to his inner spiritual struggles and sets them both against the intellectual backdrop of his age. Allen Guelzo's unique intellectual biography explores the role of ideas in Lincoln's life, treating him as a serious thinker deeply involved in the nineteenth-century debates over politics, religion, and culture. Lincoln emerges here as a creative yet profoundly paradoxical man--a man possessed of deep moral and religious character yet without adherence to organized religion. More than a masterful biography of a great American figure, this volume also provides important insights into the ideas that have shaped the American landscape. Based on new materials recovered from the papers of Lincoln's early biographers, Gu! ! elzo's work sheds light on the intellectual conflicts that once led to civil war--and that still influence today's "culture wars".

About this title

From the Publisher

Allen Guelzo's major new biography Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company) has won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, the annual award given to the best work in the Civil War field. Sharing the award is a book on slavery, Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger.

Guelzo's book breaks new ground in exploring the role of ideas in Lincoln's life, treating him for the first time as a serious thinker deeply involved in the struggles of 19th-century thought. Lincoln emerges from Guelzo's portrait as a creative yet profoundly paradoxical man-possessing deep moral and religious character yet not adhering to any organized form of religion, a classic nineteenth century liberal who yet came to realize that the liberal state could not survive without an appeal to natural law and natural theology.

Guelzo is dean of the Templeton Honors College and Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern College in Pennsylvania, and a former fellow of the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University.

Presented by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute of Gettysburg College, the Lincoln Prize is the most generous award in the field of American history. Each of the winning books will earn a $20,000 prize and a bronze bust of Lincoln. The awards, announced on Lincoln's birthday, will be presented at an April 18, 2000 banquet in New York City.

From the Back Cover

Since its publication little more than three years ago, "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" has garnered numerous accolades, not least the prestigious 2000 Lincoln Prize. Allen Guelzo's peerless biography of America's most celebrated president is now available for the first time in a fine paperback edition.

The first "intellectual biography" of Lincoln, this work explores the role of ideas in Lincoln's life, treating him as a serious thinker deeply involved in the nineteenth-century debates over politics, religion, and culture. Written with passion and dramatic impact, Guelzo's masterful study offers a revealing new perspective on a man whose life was in many ways a paradox. As journalist Richard N. Ostling notes, "Much has been written about Lincoln's belief and disbelief, " but Guelzo's extraordinary account "goes deeper."

About this edition

• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0802838723
• ISBN 13: 9780802838728
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 516