Lincoln and the Fathers
Sons’ relationships with fathers are never simple. Richard Brookhiser’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s connection to the Founding Fathers from whom the statesman politically descended is estimably rich. Founder’s Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln is a biography that seeks not to narrate every detail of its subject’s life, but rather to establish a perspective from which it has not yet been explored in depth: Lincoln’s intellectual connection to the American Founding. Brookhiser plainly admires his subject, but does not deify him. Lincoln appears in these pages as wholly human. Indeed, one of this book’s striking features is how utterly normal Lincoln…
