A fresh look at Lincoln

A fresh look at Lincoln

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Before Sidney Blumenthal was a White House aide and confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton, before he was a journalist for The New Yorker and The Washington Post and author of the influential political book “The Permanent Campaign,” he was a boy in Chicago mesmerized by the story of Abraham Lincoln.

“I’ve always been fixated on Lincoln,” said the 67-year-old Blumenthal. He recalled a childhood trip to visit Lincoln landmarks in Springfield, Ill., the sense of immediacy from the Old State Capitol and the reconstruction of the village of New Salem.

The mountain of Lincoln books has grown taller with last week’s publication of “A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849,” the first of four planned volumes on the 16th president. More than 500 pages long, “A Self-Made Man” follows Lincoln’s story and the politics of the country from his birth in 1809 through the completion of his one term as a congressman, in 1849. The next installments, which Blumenthal has mostly completed, are scheduled to come out in each of the following three years.

Blumenthal’s credentials as a Lincoln biographer stem from his own background: a reporter’s instincts for uncovering news, a political obsessive’s immersion in history and firsthand knowledge of how the presidency works.