This book by one of our leading American historians interprets our history through a group of people the author calls egalitarians and through the fact of political partisanship. This is just one way among many to explain American history. This author, this well-known historian, is arrogant.
Burlingame makes Lincoln into a Jungian archetype, a real hero, some kind of psychological paradigm. A little over the top for me. P. 178
Burlingame's Lincoln is a Lincoln of faith. P. 179
Ronald C. White, Jr.'s Lincoln is a Lincoln of words and rhetoric. P. 180
Apart from maybe Jefferson, no other President matches Lincoln's rhetorical excellence, but his output was small. Fred Kaplan overreaches. P. 181
However great was Lincoln's rhetoric, it didn't necessarily get anything done. P. 187
The lockout and strike at the Carnegie steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892 was the culminating event of the Gilded story. The author tells the story well. P. 233
The destruction of Homestead by Carnegie's goon with the help of the government was a harbinger of the eventual decline of organized labor in the early 21st Century. How sad. P. 249
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