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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN num: 9780060924713
ISBN number: 0060924713
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 544
Printing Date: January 05, 1994
Publishing house: Harper Perennial
Release Date: January 05, 1994
Sale Popularity Level: 38897
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Product Description:
A masterful biography of Lincoln that follows his bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made sucess in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most tumultuous periods.
Amazon.com Review:
Someone once said that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other person in history save Jesus and Shakespeare. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the Civil War without getting to know the complex figure of the 16th president. More than any other biographer, Stephen B. Oates brings the plain-talking man from Illinois to life as a canny politician, a doting husband, and a determined wartime leader. Oates has an appealing appreciation for Lincoln's majestic control of the English language, his raw humor, and his undeniable heroism. The final pages, covering Lincoln's death and his legacy, are graceful and moving.
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Rated by buyers 
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WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE is not a great book, but it is a good one; a solid, often entertaining biography of a man whose life and death quite literally shape American history to this very hour. From birth, Abraham Lincoln probably had more going against him than any man ever to hold the office of President; born quite literally in a log cabin, estranged from his family, hopeless with women, subject to fits of deep depression and melancholy, and considered to be both ugly and awkward, Lincoln should have lived an anonymous life and died an anonymous death. Instead, 143 years after his murder, he is arguably the most famous, the most respected, and the most written-about American in history. And justly so, because it is quite possible that no one but this bizarre and fantasical man could have guided his nation through the most terrible event in its history, the Civil War.
Author S.B. Oates faced a daunting challenge in recounting Lincoln's life; gloss over Lincoln's birth, upbringing and legal career to concentrate on his tumultous years in the White House, or spread the story evenly from cradle to grave. It's always a difficult question for a historian to decide where to put the "schwerpunkt" of his efforts, and Oates seems to have chosen the latter strategy, with understandably mixed results. On the one hand, a lot of Lincoln's doings as a bumbling suitor, self-taught lawyer, and aspiring politico are rather dull going; on the other, he succeeds in painting a very clear picture of who Abraham Lincoln was as a man prior to his becoming an icon - who he was and what he believed in. Some readers may be surprised at how the image of Lincoln which we (and by "we" I mean non-Southerners) were taught as children - that he was half messianic deliverer of the slaves, half homespun Yankee philosopher - tends to crumble the closer you get to it. Lincoln certainly was gifted with a turn of phrase and a wicked sense of humor, but Oates reveals as well that Lincoln was also a "great man" in the less pleasant sense of the word - calculating, manipulative, ruthless, and quite capable of arguing for causes he didn't believe in with all the passion at his command.
Oates also shows that Lincoln was gifted with a great operational eye, and in many ways was the outstanding military commander of the North - he personally oversaw a brief military operation early in the war, and insisted on directing grand strategy from Washington rather than entrusting it to his generals, especially when it became clear he lacked a field commander who knew one end of a musket from the other. And he does an excellent job of showing how the strain of Presidential responsibility, the constant backbiting in Washington, the incompetence of his generals, his unstable relationship with his wife, and numerous personal tragedies pushed Lincoln to the breaking point not only mentally but physcially as well. Lastly, MALICE gave me a new respect for Lincoln's outstanding talent for political rhetoric, which seems to have been sharpened to a fine edge by his fierce debates with the "Little Giant", Stephen Douglas. Where the book dissapointed me was in its extremely superficial descriptions of War events, and in its relative lack of direct quotations from Lincoln himself - the man was a veritable Yoda when it came to uttering catchy, cracker-barrel wisdom, but there is precious little of that droll wit in MALICE. That and the rather dull spells early on dampen my enthusiasm for the work a little bit, but overall, Oates does an effective job of bringing a sense of Lincoln to the reader. And I have to admit, his descriptions of the outpouring of grief which followed Lincoln's assassination in 1865 had me on the verge of tears. Any book that can do that is worth a read.
Rated by buyers 
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This reviewer is fortunate to be a former student of Stephen B. Oates, both in his History of the American Civil War and in his seminar on biography writing. WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE gives what Mr. Oates calls "a portrait" of Abraham Lincoln. Oates cautioned students about presuming that any portrait was "definitive." His classes in biography writing were thorough and strict (illustrated by his own index cards and reams of notes), so of course when bogus plagiarism charges were slung at him, his students knew he would run them down with a truckload of substantiation of his work. How sad that he had to defend himself against "academia at its pissiest."
What I particularly enjoyed about reading WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE was the sense of again being in his Civil War classroom. Mr. Oates has an uncanny ability to create a scene in the mind of the listener. His description of Abraham Lincoln's assassination plot took two classes -- and he managed to end the very first class at the point where John Wilkes Booth drilled a hole in the door of the private seating area in Ford's Theater. Needless to say, every student attended every class! And reading the book gave a sense of that classroom presence.
I do take exception to the reader who criticizes Oates on "psychoanalyzing" Lincoln, when in fact Oates clearly and masterfully is combining a series of documented facts to arrange the portrait in a story form. There is no guessing other than where it is admitted.
All in all, WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE is a worthwhile and accessible biography of a complex and fascinating man, and I enthusiastically recommend it.
Rated by buyers 
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Will anyone dare to write an accurate assessment of the 16th President or are the myths that surround him just to strong to penetrate? I await a writer willing to discuss the wholesale destruction of property in the South that left thousands of civilians to starve, destruction sanctioned by Lincoln. I await a discusion on the hostage taking and the indiscriminate killing of Southern civilians. I await a thorough discusion of the Dahlgren Raid and its implications, I await a real assessment of the Lincoln/Seward relationship, and I await a real judgement on Lincoln's lack of religious belief. This book, like all the others ignores anything that might be the slightest cotroversial and that might dent the aura surrounding Abraham Lincoln.
Alan Lowe. BA. Manchester Metropolitan University.
Rated by buyers -
This book generated controversy among Lincoln scholars. The general reading public, however, will probably enjoy both the book's prose and its story. Regardless of whether there is much, or anything, new in the volume, its account of Lincoln is told with flair. Points that disturbed some Lincoln scholars will probably not be noticed by general readers. I read the book before I knew about the dispute, and found the volume enchanting.
Rated by buyers -
Consider the great biographies of Lincoln: Nicolay and Hay,[10 volumes] his secretaries, Carl Sandburg's Abraham Licoln [6 volumes], Benjamin's single volume and all those that preceed and follow this, you must conclude this is the best single volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, indeeed the best general biography of the President and the man. The closest rival is Carwardine's Lincoln which deals in depth in one aspect of his life. WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE IS THE BEST INTRODUCTION TO THAT COMPLEX MAN AND HIS TIME AND ACHEIVEMENTS THAT WE HAVE TO DATE.
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