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After years of revisionist historians sniping at his legacy, Abraham Lincoln is hip again. The election of Barack Obama--an unapologetic admirer--and the bicentennial of the 16th president's birth have refocused America's attention on Honest Abe. Amid a multitude of new Lincoln books is Charles Bracelen Flood's 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History (Simon and Schuster, $30), a chronicle of the great man's last year. The pressures on the president that year were enormous, from the burden of an unpopular war to the political powderkeg created by his wife's bizarre behavior. Lincoln toughed it out, however, winning the war and reelection. Flood, a critically acclaimed author, claims that Lincoln made 1864 one of the pivotal years in American history. And lurking in the shadows, watching and plotting, was John Wilkes Booth.
Fri., Feb. 13, 7 p.m., 2009
Fri., Feb. 13, 7 p.m., 2009
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