Rating: 
Summary: you can always look at things in hindsight
Review: Lincoln, faced the problems head on, which most of the prior Presidents were stalling for time. His job was first and foremost to keep the union intact. I'd hate to see the United States flag with only 30 stars on it today. A lot of people would like to think that Lincoln's main goal was to end slavery, but it was to protect and preserve the union in which he did. however I admire a book that presents a different side. I don't agree, but I'm glad I live in a country that will let you have the freedom to voice your opinion. It's worth reading just to make you think about different views. I'll end with a quote that pretty much sums up what type of person Lincoln was.... " the death of Lincoln was the worst thing that could have happened to the south" - Jefferson Davis
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and dishonest
Review: Modern Conservative thought draws on both 20th century Libertarianism, which advocates minimal government, and 19th century Hamiltonian/Whig ideas, which advocated active government intervention in the economy. It would therefore be enlightening to have a cogent Libertarian critque of the 19th century Whig programs. DiLorenzo claims to have written such a book; alas, he has failed miserably. Instead he argues a conspiracy theory under which Lincoln used the Civil War as an excuse to enact Whiggish big-government programs. This has nothing to do with the realities of 19th century politics. The Whigs (who arose in response to Andy Jackson's "imperial presidency") believed that the President should have little impact on domestic policy, and Lincoln followed this doctrine. The "big government" programs enacted in the 1860's--land grant colleges, the homestead act, aid to the transcontinental railroad--were passed by a Republican Congress without Lincoln's active invlovement. DiLorenzo's real argument is with Congress, not Lincoln, but he doesn't understand this or doesn't care. The book is also filled with serious factual errors; DiLorenzo has aimed at the wrong target--and missed nevertheless.
Rating: 
Summary: ...At Long Last, An Authentic Account of Lincoln...
Review: "The Real Lincoln" presents powerful arguments that undo the prevailing revisionist history that has come to represent Lincoln. If the reviewer below had actually attended the debate at the Independent Institute between DiLorenzo and Jaffa, it would have been quite apparent that DiLorenzo won that debate hands down. As for twisting Jaffa's words, DiLorenzo simply trumped Jaffa's predictable debate tactic of likening his every opponent to Hitler by mentioning that it was Jaffa's own book which relies on Hitler's words to makes its argument. Jaffa's Lincoln, and likewise Phillip Shaw Paludan's Lincoln is a false figure, a mythical Lincoln constructed for academic purposes to bolster the now thread bare evidence of Lincoln's greatness. To perpetuate this requires a network of back slapping scholars for which there appears no shortage of. Even Paludan cannot help himself in his review of "The Real Lincoln." He lists all those who reinforce his own stale scholarship. It's time to move beyond their ideas. A reconsideration of Lincoln is uncovering the portrait of the true man. "The Real Lincoln" is that portrait.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Short
Review: Judging from the howls of the orthodox, Mr. Dilorenzo has hit a nerve. My only complaint is that the "The Real Lincoln" is too short. Volumes await to be written on the subjects raised herein.If you want to explore the genesis of the bloated, centralized, unconstitutional federal apparatus under which Americans labor today, read this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Review: This book is essential reading for those who would wish to understand the state of the world in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and America's role in shaping the same in terms of the 'hows' and the 'whys'. Dr. Dilorenzo essentially retraces the process by which the foundation of the modern 'House of America' was established, and through which she would be able to influence nearly every major event of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The destiny of man was indeed shaped by those events of 1860-64; the American North-South Divide was indeed a harbinger of what was to come of the world at-large. Especially revealing were the excerpts concerning the 'train of abuses' perpetrated by King George III (leading to the American Revolution in 1775), and then repeated by President Lincoln (leading to the American Civil War in 1860). A bloodline had indeed been established between the British Leviathan and the American Leviathan; power had indeed been successfully passed; empire had indeed been successfully preserved; mercantilism had indeed saved the day.
Rating:
Summary: not worth spit
Review: This is an extraordinarily bad book. It is a good example of "potted history"; that is, taking isolated facts or quotes, almost always out of context, and then plopping them down like potted plants in the hope of creating what might look something like an argument. Unfortunately, it depends for its persuasiveness on the hope that the reader has never read any of the sources cited by DiLorenzo, and further, that the reader has no independent knowledge of the issues under discussion. It is dishonest ideological hack-work put together by a man who is more interested in polemics that historical inquiry. DiLorenzo consistently misrepresents the work of other scholars, or simply ignores that work entirely if it contradicts his own thesis; he misrepresents historical events and the historiography concerning those events; he uses evidence in selective or misleading ways with the purpose of creating false or misleading impressions. There is not room here to pick everything apart, but if you really want a better understanding of the causes of the Civil War, you might begin with "Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War" by Charles Dew (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001). I also would recommend Mark Neely, "Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism" (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999)for a discussion of the less than perfect Southern commitment to constitutional rights (where that might be understood as something beyond merely a defense of the peculiar institution). As for Abraham Lincoln, there are a number of great biographies out there; this isn't one of them.
Rating:
Summary: An ignorant and dishonest work.
Review: The first thing you notice about this book is that no historian with any reputation in Civil War or Lincoln studies says one good thing about this book. That may recommend it to conspiracy theorists who won't read anything that challenges their views. But those seeking a sensible judgment and/or those who have read much in the honest literature of the era will find this book dishonest as well as poorly researched. DeLorenzo has recently said on C Span that works by Mark Grimsley on Sherman's march and Mark Neely on Civil Liberties support his views. He could not be more wrong as readers of those books will tell you. In fact they refute his rant with overwhelming evidence. What he has done is to find and quote authors who wrote in an era where racism dominated Civil War scholarship and southern born authors wrote to prove that their ancestors could not be fighting for slavery (despite the fact that the President and Vice President of the Confederacy and the commissioners sent from the Deep South to persuade northern southern states to secede all said that's what they were fighting for when the war began. What is so sadly revealing about DeLorenzo's book is how many people leap to defend it who have not read David Donald, James McPherson, Herman Belz, Harry Jaffa, Allen Geulzo (who dedicated his fine Lincoln book to Jack Kemp), Mark Neely, Douglas Wilson, Rodney Davis, Kenneth Winkle, Gary Wills, Brian Dirck or anything written in the last 20 years and published by a reputable press on Lincoln. I've been publishing and writing about Lincoln for about 35 years now. My books have won prizes from committees of scholars, including the Lincoln Prize. No scholar that I have learned to respect in over three decades would give this book even one star. I regret you don't have a choice of munus points="subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge."
Rating:
Summary: Revisionist, intellectually dishonest crap
Review: Before wasting any more of my time than I already did in reading this piece of junk, I would refer readers to the following web page http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/Spring2002/krannawitter.html
which has a good and concise critique of Mr. Di Lorenzo's book. Also I would refer them to the record of a debate between Mr. Di Lorenzo and Harry Jaffa at the Independent Institute and its accompanying links. I won't go into a critque of the book itself as that is more than adequately done by the reviewer at the above listed web page, but I will comment on Mr. Di Lorenzo's intellectual dishonesty. If you read the account of his debate with Mr. Jaffa and then read his account of that debate as well as his characterization of Mr. Jaffa's views, you will see that Mr. Di Lorenzo plays a little fast and loose with the facts. First, he twists Mr. Jaffa's words around to suggest that Mr. Jaffa has some Nazi sympathies and then goes on to describe Mr. Jaffa's positions as being something that they clearly are not--this becomes clear if you read the transcript of the debate. Such intellectual dishonesty on the part of the author about the debate surrounding this book makes one wonder about the integrity of the book itself. For a better idea of that, read the review cited above.
Rating:
Summary: More like fiction
Review: When I picked this item up at my local library I was intrigued, because I am quite a Lincoln buff. I was severly disappointed. I had suspicions from the sub-title and they were confirmed. The author is obivously a southern sympathizer who seeks to disparage Lincoln to promote his own ideas on the mid-nineteenth century. Dilorenzo contends that the war was unnecessary and lays the blame at the feet of Lincoln--as if Lincoln was solely responsible for the outbreak of war. Lincoln exerted unusual powers, but MOST historians agree that he had to suspend some rights in a time of war to preserve the Union. Let's not forget that the south fired the first shot and the Federal government (more than just Lincoln) responded. To blame the current state of our Federal government on Lincoln is simplistic. Does today's government resemble the government of the mid-nineteenth century? To assert that Lincoln created the centralized government of today is irresponsible. As much as I admire Lincoln, I would assert that Lincoln did not control the growth of the government, but rather that he was carried along by events out of his control. Yes, he was the consummate politician, but he was not nearly as calculating as the author asserts. This book is destined to the back shelves of libraries, to reside side-by-side with all the other books proported to reveal the "real" Lincoln. For the hypothesis of this book to be true, then either all other historians are idiots or there is a conspiracy; or Dilorenzo is a revisionist historian. You make the call.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, documentation & facts on Lincoln's tyrany
Review: Lincoln forever changed the United States from a constitutional republic of sovereign states to a central government with administrative provinces. An excellent, thought provoking read that is well researched. The evidence against Lincoln is compelling, but history is often written by the victors -- so, an intellectually honest account of his presidency has been missing -- until now.
|
