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...searching his adult writings for clues about his lust for his mother and rage toward his father. But Lincoln had his own ideas about why he suffered. He was seeped in his own rich culture, in which psychology was wrapped up with philosophy and spirituality. By studying that context, alongside Lincoln's words and the commentaries of his friends, neighbors and colleagues, we can begin to see his story. When Lincoln wrote, "I am now the most miserable man living"; when he averred that melancholy is a "misfortune, not a fault"; and when he said that without his jokes...
...being timelessly funny. My favorite example was after the battle of Chickamauga. One of the Union generals had behaved badly and had become unnerved. Lincoln said the general was 'confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.' You don't have to think about that in the context of 1863. It's just a funny image--full of anger and bitterness but getting deeply to the truth...
...burial. Using an authoritative voice-over narrative style, Geary carefully plots out the chronology of Lincoln's final days. In a typically compact opening sequence, excerpts from Lincoln's famous, conciliatory address, "With malice toward none; with charity for all..." get intercut with scenes that establish its historical context and Lincoln's fatalistic attitude about his own safety. The book then shifts to its primary character, John Wilkes Booth. Reduced to a rather flat villain in the collective historical memory, here Booth comes alive as a handsome actor and ladies man whose insatiable ego, as much as a muddled sense...
...years. The teenage birth rate was actually higher in 1957 than it is today, but that was an era of early marriage, when nearly a quarter of 18-and 19-year-old females were wedded. The overwhelming majority of teen births in the '50s thus occurred in a connubial context, and mainly to girls 17 and over. Twenty and 30 years ago, if an unwed teenager should, heaven forbid, become pregnant, chances are her parents would see that she was swiftly married off in a shotgun wedding. Or, if marriage was impractical, the girl would discreetly disappear during her confinement...
...justifiable in extreme cases. Rome rejects sterilization on any grounds; Curran does not. The Vatican insists that "every genital act must be within the framework of marriage"; Curran thinks that premarital sex is acceptable under some circumstances and that loving homosexual acts can be morally licit in the context of a permanent commitment. He believes that the church should alter its ban on remarriage after divorce...