Howdy folks! Francis here again to let everyone know that as this posts, me and the boys are actually on the road!
Yep, the three of us, all wearing our Snakes and Otters gear, are hopping in the car and making a five hour road trip to meet the Great Emancipator himself, Abraham Lincoln. In Springfield, IL we will be touring both the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum as well as Lincoln’s tomb.
We’re treating this more of a pilgrimage more than anything else. A trip is somewhere you go and then come back from the same,.whereas a pilgrimage is where you go somewhere and are forever transformed for the better by the experience. That’s what we’re hoping for here. Good friends, good food and loads of good conversation.
We will be doing an episode on Lincoln himself later this summer, so our trip will be described in detail there certainly. I also suspect that Martin in particular will be so overwhelmed by the trip that you will read all about it in one of his upcoming Martin Monday postings right here on our website.
There are tons of great Lincoln’s biographies out there, both in print and on film, but to keep things simple, I will give you only one of each . . .
The best print book on Lincoln himself, for my money, is the one written in 1996 by master biographer David Herbert Donald entitled simply Lincoln. It’s widely available in all formats, including audio book, and is well worth your time.
Regarding the best film on Lincoln, of course there is but one that rises to the top: Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Lincoln from 2012 starring the incomparable Daniel Day Lewis. It is a tight tale covering only a few months in 1865, so don’t expect Lincoln’s life story here, but if you want to know the man as well as the master politician, this is the one to go with. A
There are so many great scenes from that movie, but I’ll leave you with the following which opens the film and which in just over three minutes showcases both the man’s humor and genius all rolled up together:
