Word: lincoln
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is something useful, too, in Lincoln's humor. At a time when we both take ourselves desperately seriously and scoff off all attempts at meaning, we can learn something from a man who saw life as serious and deeply absurd, and who drew on both to fuel his deep sense of purpose. "I've been a fan of Lincoln's from an early age," Conan O'Brien told TIME, "and really fascinated by him. The main thing for me is that he was really funny. He chose the right words and kept things short, and those are two secrets...
...there was a fire in my house," O'Brien says, "I'd get my wife and child out, and then I'd run back in and get a Lincoln signature that I own--a pardon that he signed. I think I look at it every day." Asked why, he pauses for a second. "He's become such an otherworldly figure, such an iconic figure. But the fact is, he's a person. I guess it's inspiring to me that people are capable of being that cool...
Shenk is the author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, to be published in September by Houghton Mifflin...
Visit us at time.com/lincoln for more stories and photos, such as Hugh Sidey's look at the history of the Lincoln Bedroom...
...American writer's words are more admired than those of Abraham Lincoln. By the time of his assassination in 1865, he had written passages by which everything that followed would be measured. But such an ability was the last thing the American public expected from the obscure prairie lawyer who took office just four years earlier. "We have a President without brains," wrote the country's leading historian, George Bancroft. Bancroft was, admittedly, a Democrat, but many self-respecting Republicans were also concerned about the implications of having an untried, self-educated "rail splitter" as a leader in time...