Lincoln: A Photobiography

Linclon: A Photobiography
Russell Freedman
Sandpiper, 1989
Pages:160
Reading Level: 9-12
Genre: Biography


This book is a biography of Lincoln's entire life. It starts with him as a young boy, and works all the way up to his death. Lincoln's father was a simple farmer, and his family was poor. Since he had to help his father with the farm, he went to school by "little's" He said that if you added up all his schooling, it was probably less than a year. But this doesn't mean that he was stupid; on the contrary. Lincoln was a brillant man. They say he was never seen without a book. He could have intelligent conversations about shakespere and loved to quote him. He never went to college, but rather read lots and lots about law, and after three years of study he went and passed the bar examine. Although Lincoln was brilliant, he definitely wasn't perfect. He argued with his wife a lot, and suffered from drepression quite badly. After he had been a lawyer for a while he decided to get into politics. He actually lost his first campain, but kept trying. After a while in politcs, he decided to quit for a while, but when he heard about what was going with the new territories and slavery, he decided to run for president. He won, and soon thereafter the civil war began. This was very difficult on Lincoln. In the pictures, one can see that he aged very much in those 4 years. The civil war was hard on him for one reason because he didn't have any good war generals. Lincoln had to train himself in the ways of leading an army. In the end, they won the war, but only after hundreds of thousands of men died. Immediatly after it was over, Abraham Lincoln was shot to death.

I would recommend this book to students studying the civil war or presidents of the united states.

Potential Problems: The only problem I can foresee with this book is that some children will be upset about Abraham's shortcomings.

My reaction: I thought this book was interesting, and the pictures were great and added to the knowledge.

My rating: ****