What We’re Reading

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Michael Burlingame is America’s leading scholar of Abraham Lincoln. A new, single volume, abridgement of his two-volume biography of America’s sixteenth president published by Johns Hopkins brings together Lincoln’s life for the lay reader with scholarly vigor and clarity for readers looking for a good one-volume read of the first Republican president. Burlingame may not add anything new, but his meticulous research and presentation presents Lincoln as he was rather than how people want him to be. The two epochs of Lincoln’s life are masterfully presented: before the presidency and during the presidency. I found Burlingame’s presentation of Lincoln prior to the war (a little over 300 pages) to be very good and filled in details otherwise not known to me given the prioritization of Lincoln’s Civil War leadership in popular memory and imagination. A great biography, anyone looking for a single volume biography of Lincoln would do well to pick up Burlingame’s abridgement. It is eminently accessible and in a single volume readable in a couple of weeks.

~ Paul Krause

Gustav Flabert, Madame Bovary. Love is an inescapable prison of terror, stress, and resentment. This is what Flaubert exemplifies through Emma Bovary. Readers see a character overly obsessed with the idea of love. However, Emma has never truly been in love, only with an imaginary character she developed through her readings. Emma, as an academic, has used her literary skills to transform and create the ultimate partner, but this is not enough. Emma becomes so overwhelmed with this inanimate object that she cannot determine reality versus the natural world. Flaubert’s novel is a warning for lovers to focus on their significant other’s visible strengths and weaknesses, not to formulate someone else from an unrealistic dream. Doing so will quickly turn to hatred.

~ Sarah Tillard

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