Andrew Ferguson video on his new book, Land of Lincoln
One neat thing about blogging is that a suggestion from another blogger, in this case Bill Hobbs, can send me into a direction that I otherwise would not have ventured into.
Hobbs tipped me off to a video from the Hoover Institution where Peter Robinson interviews author Andrew Ferguson about his new book, Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America.
Ferguson writes in the forward:
Abraham Lincoln hasn't been forgotten, but he's shrunk...That earlier Lincoln, that large Lincoln, seems to be slipping away.
Ferguson traveled throughout America to measure how contemporary Americans view the great President. His first stop? Thai Little Home Cafe in Ferguson's home town of Chicago. The owners maintain a Lincoln shrine inside the restaurant; they were first drawn to the Great Emancipator when they noticed the phrase "Land of Lincoln" on Illinois license plates.
Lincoln hasn't shrunk in the eyes of these restaurant owners.
It's a terrific video, Ferguson is a great story teller--I'm looking forward to picking up his book.
Related Marathon Pundit post:
Thirty hours in Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois
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1 comments:
I'll have to look into it. For what seems like a similar treatment, but from a different perspective, try Jan Morris's Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest. Morris is best known as a travel writer, and she describes this as a "travelogue" through how Lincoln is perceived in the states rather than a biography of Lincoln.
It's quite good, particularly her observation that in her first trip to the US, she was struck by two things that seemed ubiquitous: Lincoln memorabilia, and grape jelly.
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