Word: lincoln
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...suggests that Safire would produce a tedious and seemingly endless work of fiction. In fact, Full Disclosure (1977), his first novel, was a sprightly, best-selling account of a beleaguered White House not entirely unlike Nixon's. But Freedom is another, infinitely longer story. Subtitled A Novel of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the book inches its way from May 1861, shortly after the Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, to Jan. 1, 1863, when President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. This takes just under 1,000 pages, followed by about 130 more, which Safire calls the "Underbook," where...
...answers provided by Freedom are not encouraging. For one thing, it is difficult in 1987 to generate much suspense over whether or not Lincoln will free the slaves. Curiosities have to be piqued by something other than the plot. But Safire does not seem to acknowledge this necessity. His narrative is hobbled to a crawl by the freight of information it must carry. Characters are rarely allowed to act and think like recognizable human beings; instead, they must constantly remind themselves (and possibly forgetful readers) just who they are and what they have done. Hence Union General John Fremont muses...
...pursuing a third career as well: pilferer of rare historical documents. Last week the FBI arrested him for possessing a 1904 letter signed by Novelist Henry James that had been missing from the Library of Congress. Five days earlier Mount had been charged with stealing letters written by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Said Special FBI Agent W. Douglas Gow: "This isn't just one or two documents. It's a piece of history...
...last month after Goodspeed's, a Boston bookstore, paid him $20,000 for 27 documents, including nine letters from Portraitist James McNeill Whistler and one from James. In early August Mount approached the bookstore again with an offer to sell a collection of rare Civil War manuscripts featuring three Lincoln letters. Suspicious store officials alerted the FBI, which arrested Mount when he returned to the bookstore with the Lincoln letters on Aug. 13. A subsequent search of his safe-deposit box in Washington turned up a cache of some 200 papers from the Civil War era, many believed to have...
...least six people, all of whom had been on the ground, were treated at hospitals for injuries caused by the crash. One man, Lawrence Favio, 30, of Lincoln Park, was airlifted to the University of Michigan Medical Center and was in critical condition with burns over 39 percent of his body, said a hospital spokeswoman...