The Lincoln Revival

Abra­ham Lin­coln has nev­er exact­ly gone out of fash­ion. More books have been writ­ten about him than any oth­er Amer­i­can pres­i­dent. But even so, he has recent­ly dom­i­nat­ed our thoughts, our pub­lic dis­course, in a way that we haven’t seen in some time. And that’s because he start­ed some­thing in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that end­ed with the inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Oba­ma last week.

To mark the occa­sion, I want­ed to high­light an excel­lent series of pod­casts that focus­es on Lin­coln and the Civ­il War. Cre­at­ed by the Gilder Lehrman Insti­tute of Amer­i­can His­to­ry, this series fea­tures talks by some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing schol­ars of the Civ­il War peri­od, and at least two Pulitzer Prize win­ners. Among the lec­tures, you’ll find the fol­low­ing:

• Team of Rivals: The Polit­i­cal Genius of Abra­ham Lin­coln (iTune­sU) — Doris Kearns Good­win
• Cross­roads of Free­dom: Anti­etam (iTune­sU) — James McPher­son
• No Par­ty Now: Pol­i­tics in The Civ­il War North (iTune­sU) — Adam I.P. Smith
• Lin­col­n’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion (iTune­sU) — Allen Guel­zo
• Abra­ham Lin­coln: A Biog­ra­pher’s Notes (iTune­sU) — Richard Car­war­dine
• Race and Reunion: The Civ­il War in Amer­i­can Mem­o­ry (iTune­sU) — David Blight

For those of you who don’t want to work with iTunes, you can access these pre­sen­ta­tions and more at the Gilder Lehrman web­site here. You can also find here a page entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed Abra­ham Lin­coln and relat­ed con­tent.

P.S. Yet more proof that Lin­coln is now every­where. New York­er writer Adam Gop­nik has just released a new book, Angels and Ages, which exam­ines the unique stamp that Dar­win and Lin­coln placed on our mod­ern times. (Both men, by the way, were born on the same day 200 years ago next month.) You can lis­ten here to an inter­view with Gop­nik that was record­ed yes­ter­day.