The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America

by Mark E. Neely Jr.

Mark E. Neely, Jr., gives us the first compact biography of Abraham Lincoln based on new scholarship. Neely, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, vividly recaptures the central place of politics in Lincoln’s life. Richly illustrated, nuanced and accessible, written with attention to the age in which Lincoln lived, yet ever alert to universal moral questions, this book provides a portrait of Lincoln as an extraordinary man in his own time and ours.

Genres: History, Biography, Civil War, Nonfiction, Presidents, War

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Mark E. Neely, Jr. is an American historian best known as an authority on the U.S. Civil War in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991. He earned his undergraduate degree in American Studies at Yale University in 1966 and his Ph.D. in history at the same school in 1973. Yale's Graduate School would award him with a Wilbur Cross Medal in 1995.

From 1971 to 1972 Neely was a visiting instructor at Iowa State University. In the latter year, he was named director of The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a position he held for twenty years.

In 1992, Dr. Neely was named the John Francis Bannon Professor of History and American Studies at Saint Louis University. And, in 1998, he was made the McCabe Greer Professor of Civil War History at Pennsylvania State University.

Neely is best known for his 1991 book The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, which won both the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Bell I. Wiley Prize the following year. In March 1991, he published an article in the magazine Civil War History, entitled Was the Civil War a Total War?, which is considered one of the top three most influential articles on the war written in the last half of the 20th Century.

- from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Miles Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good concise biography of Lincoln that shows, among other things, his absolute indifference to constitutional niceties in the defense of an idealized American nation

[Ty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Competent and well researched history book that dealt with the surrounding history of Lincoln's contemporaries as much as with Lincoln himself. Though the book touches on some aspects of Lincoln's personal philosophies, it's title gives the impression that the reader will be taken into the mind of Lincoln, and that rarely happens here. It sets itself up to be a penetrating biography, but there is little new here. At times Lincoln seems almost incidental to what is being discussed.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me a while to read but it was worth it. What courage (and stress!) it took to be president during the Civil War. Certainly wasn't what he expected when he was elected. There was a lot to learn and mistakes were made in the beginning but he soldiered thru. And to lose a child! Good insight and who knows - what would his legacy have been like if he hadn't been assassinated?

[Stevenson Joshua Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well it was a bit like a play by play deep dive history class-- educational but not very entertaining... I learned more than I needed to know

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. I love Abraham Lincoln.